


C Is For...

by WennyT



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family Feels, Fluff, Grumpy Old Men, M/M, Other, POV First Person, Single Parents, aka single dad au, dating again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24582397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WennyT/pseuds/WennyT
Summary: ...Cherry.But also, Changmin thinks, 'choices'.
Relationships: Jung Yunho/Shim Changmin, Shim Changmin/Other(s)
Comments: 107
Kudos: 407





	1. prologue

My name is Shim Changmin, and I’ve always had a bit of a problem with making choices. 

Or, not quite a problem.

But notable choices being made in my life tend to go somewhat like this:

\--

1) Education

“You need to choose which university to work towards,” my parents say.

“Er,” I say.

“We’ll choose for you,” my parents continue jovially. “How does KAIST sound? Or Seouldae?”

“Okay,” I say.

\--

2) Career

“He should strive to be a prosecutor,” Fifth Uncle reasons, crunching on the radish kimchi Mother made last week.

“No,” Third Aunt argues, “these days that’s a thankless job. Get a foot in the door at Samsung, Changmin. Or Hyundai. You’ll be set for life.”

“Well,” Second Uncle muses, "your grasp of Korean and English have always been good, boy. How about being a journalist?”

“Er,” I say. 

\--

3) Romance

“Let’s date,” my high school classmate says.

“Okay,” I say.

“Let’s get married,” my classmate-turned-girlfriend says. “Seoul housing prices are mad. It doesn’t make sense for us to maintain two residences.”

“Er,” I say.

“Let’s have a baby,” my girlfriend-turned-wife says. “I feel like we have nothing to talk about anymore.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Let’s get divorced,” my soon-to-be-ex-wife says. “I don’t love you anymore, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But you’re barely home when I am, anyway, and you talk more to the baby than me. I’m so sorry.”

“Er,” I say, and then I make the most important choice of my life. “Okay. But Cherry’s mine.” 

\--

Let me backtrack a little. 

She comes to me one afternoon, red-faced and screaming and utterly displeased with the world. Her face is wrinkled and puffy and she is hardly looking her best, with slime and bits and blood all over her. 

It’s been an easy enough life up to this very second. Easy, because the big choices in life have always been made by others for me. I don’t mind. It means I cruise along well enough, while keeping the important people in my life happy. 

Then I lay my hands on her, and she looks up into my face, and howls out her rage. How dare I touch her. How dare I have the temerity to lift her up. How dare I inflict pain on her. 

I look back at her, and I fall in love. It's a choice as easy as breathing.

“Well done in cutting the umbilical cord, Mister Shim,” the nurse informs me, whilst reaching for her. 

I back away a step, and from behind the protective goggles, the nurse’s brow creases. “We need to clean her up first, and weigh her. Then we’ll wheel her to you and the missus, don’t worry.”

“Wait,” I say. For the first time in a long time, I make a choice instead of going along with what’s expected for me. “Give me a minute. I just want to hold her.”

“Mister Shim,” the nurse starts.

“Wait,” I stare at her. She’s so small. 

I’m holding her like I practiced. Like we practiced, but her head’s so small in my palm. Her face is screwed up. Her eyes are but creases folded into that red little face. She’s still screaming.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Changmin,” my wife says, voice hoarse from shrieking and thick with exhaustion from the gruelling labour. “It’s not like they’re stealing her. I haven’t even been able to hold her yet, with how you’ve been hogging her. Just let them clean Rice Cake up, first.”

“One more minute,” I insist, to the backdrop of my wife apologising to the nurses with a tired, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over him, he’s usually more easy-going than this.” 

I don’t quite hear them, because she’s opened her eyes again, and her howls are quietening down to little whimpers. Her eyes are very black. She’s looking at me!

“She’s looking at me,” I say, delighted.

“Ah,” the nurse starts.

“She can’t fucking see anything yet, Changmin!” my wife groans. “Just fucking give her to the nurse!”

She looks at me, and her little pink lips pucker, and her eyes go from tiny slits of black to being round and too big for her face. Like dark little cherries.

Fuck, but she's beautiful.

“Hello, Rice Cake,” I call her softly by her foetal name, because she had looked like a fat little white tube of rice cake so many months ago, on the sonogram. The nickname had stuck, to my father’s -her grandfather! My father is a grandfather! I'm a father!- perplexed dismay.

My vision is blurry. I’m a twenty-seven year old man, and I’m crying.

There’s snot trickling down on my lips and I’m not even embarrassed. “I’m your Papa, and I think I’ll name you Cherry.”

\--

I get into a bit of a shitfest regarding that. Naming the love of my life Cherry, and throwing out off the window the entire list of names my wife and I and her parents and my parents and our grandparents and our entire horde of relatives had discussed previously. 

Nevertheless, Cherry likes her name well enough. It’s the only choice she doesn’t cry at. 

And me, too. Saying that she likes me well enough is a bit of an understatement.

I am her favourite, to her mother’s increasing resignation and almost-disgust. Loaded diaper? Cry till Papa is the one to change it. Gassy? Scream till Papa is the one rocking her. Sleepy? Shriek till Papa is the one who puts her down in the bassinet. Hungry? Kick scream cry mewl wriggle at everyone, including her mother, until Papa feeds her with the bottle.

“I was going to feed her,” my wife mutters. “It’s supposed to be our bonding time!”

“Never mind,” I say, half-distracted by the thought of the impending deadline for my column tomorrow. But my Cherry is hungry, and that’s more important. “I’ll do it with the bottle, if you can express it first.” 

It leads to too many fights, whispered and vicious and truncated because we don’t get to snipe at each other too long, before Cherry needs something, and we -usually me- have to scurry to do her bidding.

\--

After that first choice, it becomes easier and easier to make choices when it comes to her, despite the advice and information that comes from well-meaning family and friends from all sides.

Type of diapers. When to see the pediatrician, and when to just double down with cool cloths and baby ibuprofen. What kind of jabs to bring her for. When to try out solids, and start interpersing that with milk. If we should bring her around in a pram, or a baby carrier, or a _podaegi_ sling. 

And so on, and so on, and on.

Cherry is nearly a year old, and eagerly decimating solids without a care for milk (except when I hold the bottle up to her mouth and refuse to move it away until she drinks at least half of it), when the conversation I mentioned earlier happens.

“Let’s get divorced,” my wife isn’t looking at me. 

She’s staring down at her hands instead, and her voice is quiet. Calm. Tired. “I don’t love you anymore, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But you’re barely home when I am, anyway, and you talk more to the baby, than you do to me. I’m tired. I’m so sorry that I’m tired.”

“Er,” I say. 

Somehow, it doesn’t occur to me to fight for this. 

Maybe it’s because of how resigned she looks. Maybe it’s because I know I’ve caused her a world of hurt, and maybe the best way to stop that is to actually stop being that hurt.

There’s a pulse of selfish fear running through me, though. “Okay. But. Cherry’s mine.”

“Was she ever not?” The words are harsh unto themselves, but my soon-to-be-ex-wife’s tone is not. 

She’s actually smiling, rueful. “Don’t worry. I won’t take her away from you. Your working hours are more flexible than mine anyway, even if I want to fight for custody. I do love her, you know.”

I feel another burst of guilt, then. “I’m sorry. I’m really. I’m sorry. I… I’ll pay alimony.” 

“I don’t need it,” her voice is light. “Let’s just go according to what we agreed in our prenup. We can split up the house. And let me see Cherry on weekends.” 

There’s a little prickle in my heart, at that. ‘See’, and not ‘have’. 

But she’s never been overly possessive over Cherry. I think it’s my fault. I know it’s my fault.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. What else can I say? It’s my fault.

She pauses then, and stretches a hand out to me. We shake hands, as though we haven't been privy to each other's most private, and most ugly sides for years and years. “I accept your apology.” 

With that, the longest -the only- relationship I’ve been in so far, ends. Just like that.

  
  


\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was debating if I should post this, but people were also shouting at me for overthinking things. lol
> 
> Just so it's clear: this fictional Shim is a shit husband in this marriage.  
> All should be clearer by Chapter 1... This fic is already completed and will be chaptered.
> 
> Comments are forever and ever love. x


	2. one

“Papa,” says the forever light of my life and the current blight upon my wallet, chirpy. “Up!”

“You wanted down a minute ago,” I remind her, irritated. The tomatoes are not going to choose themselves, and already I am dawdling. “I’m not hauling you up again just to put you down one more time five minutes later.”

She simpers at me, and twists her hands behind her back. It’s a pose she’s learnt from the telly, no doubt. I make a mental note to tell my parents to cut that down to half an hour, when they next have her. 

Undaunted, she tries again. “I want to swoosh along.”

I pause, a tomato in one hand, and look down at her. “You can swoosh along on your own while Papa chooses the tomatoes. You want pasta, right?”

“Yes,” she agrees, readily enough. “The little dinosaur ones with the ketchup sauce Papa makes.”

“How many times must I tell you it’s not ketchup,” I sigh, and choose another one. “So can you swoosh along by yourself?”

“Yes!” She cheers, and twirls her way across two floor tiles. The skirt of her pink frock flares.

I am already turning back to the tomatoes, but she’s visible in my peripheral vision. As always. “Remember, only nine squares-”

“-is the biggerest distance Cherry can go away from Papa,” she finishes, hopping over a tile, or ‘squares’, as she calls them, and coming back to hug my leg.

“Biggest,” I correct, and smooth a hand across the back of her head, where her ponytail is already coming loose in wisps. I’ll tie it again in a bit, after we’ve made our purchases.

“Biggest,” she echoes obediently. Then she twirls a tile adjacent to the one I am standing on.

I pick two more tomatoes in quick succession. It takes me a minute, at most. 

But when I look up, Cherry’s gone. Shit.

“Cherry,” I say, suppressing the spike of anxiety that’s nearly always present at the back of my mind, when we’re outside. “Cherry, it’s not funny to hide from Papa in public.”

No Cherry. Shit shit shit shit _fuck_.

I look up and down the aisle, feet already moving, and the basket abandoned. It’s empty.

“Cherry,” I say, louder, lengthening my strides, panicky. 

There’s a million and one thoughts chasing each other through my head. “Cherry? _Rice Cake!_ ”

\--

I round the aisle, turning fast into the poultry section, and pull up short before I very nearly trip over a man kneeling on the floor.

My five-year-old daughter is an arm’s length from him. Too close. His face is turned towards hers, and he’s braced on his haunches. She’s talking to a stranger. He's smiling at her. It’s a man we don’t know. He’s too close.

She knows not to talk to strangers. She knows _never_ to talk to strangers, unless she’s with me and I’m doing the talking. We’ve discussed this many, many times, as part of the protocols we should follow when we’re in public. She knows them well enough that she can recite them back to me. 

I dodge around him and dart over to her, snatching her up with one arm, and running a quick hand over her, terrified that she’s been hurt in some way.

“-but cherries are my favouritest,” she’s still gabbing along to him, “because I’m Cherry. Hi, Papa!” 

The man’s trying to get up from his previously crouched position. He’s holding his hands out in front of him, like I’m a wild animal he has to fend off.

“Hi,” he starts. I don’t let him get any further.

“What were you doing with my daughter,” I snarl, hitching her up higher on my hip. “Did you touch her?”

I am quite loud. Two aunties by the pork section look up. 

His nose wrinkles. He shakes his head. “No, I-”

“Were you talking to her?” I push, rapid-fire. “Why were you kneeling down? Did you touch her? What do you want with her? Were you-”

“No,” he’s trying to cut me off, and it’s just making me more furious, “I was just-”

“Did you touch her?” I demand again, and curve my other arm about her face protectively. “Did you-”

“Papa,” she interrupts me, and pulls hard on my hair, until it smarts. I look at her, my rant halted by the pain. “Why are you shouting at Youknow?”

“What?” I blink in pain, and in confusion. “Rice Cake, what are you-”

“That’s Youknow,” she is starting to scowl. “He’s my friend. Why are you shouting at him?” 

“That is a strange man, Rice Cake,” I say too loudly. My heart is still beating too fast. “We don’t talk to strange men.”

“No,” she argues, little hands still in my hair. “Youknow told me his name. He’s not strange. He asked where you are.”

I look back at the man. He’s still got both of his hands up, and he’s bent over slightly, still frozen.

He sees that I’m looking, and straightens, keeping both hands up. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t do anything, I swear. I thought she was lost, so I was asking her where her parents are. I didn’t touch her. I swear.”

“Youknow was three squares away,” Cherry adds helpfully, and yanks my hair again to emphasise her point. “He kept to Papa’s rules.”

I look at her, and at him, and again at her. She looks fine. Not a scratch. A little sullen.

The pounding in my ears start to slow. I look back at him.

I start to pick up details that I ignored in my mad rush, because I thought I’d lost her. The strange man -Youknow? What kind of name is that?- is dressed in formal officewear. 

He’s got a suit on, grey trousers scuffed at the knees, where he was kneeling down, to talk to her. There’s a guarded expression on his face, and shiny black oxfords on his feet. His black hair is short at the sides and long on the top, with his fringe pushed back from his forehead. A badge or pass of some sort hangs from around his neck, on a red lanyard. 

There’s a prickling of heat across my nape.

“Yunho,” he says, apropos of nothing.

I blink at him. Cherry is a warm weight against my side, and I reach up a hand to disentangle the fist she’s got clutched in my hair. “Beg pardon?”

“My name,” he clarifies briskly, looking a little self-conscious. “It’s Yunho. Jeong Yunho. I think I didn’t say it well enough for your daughter to hear properly.”

“She has a problem with her _hieuts_ , we’re working on it,” I say automatically in response.

He scrubs a hand through his hair. His other hand is still upraised in the universal gesture of ‘I am harmless please do not run me over with a supermarket trolley’. “Yes, well. I swear I didn’t touch her. I swear. She came up to me, so. I just thought she was lost, and I wanted to ask her name and if I can help her find her parents. That’s it. I didn’t touch your daughter.”

“...Oh,” I say faintly. The aunties by the pork section are whispering behind their hands.

“Youknow is nice,” Cherry agrees. She’s frowning at me. “But Papa shouted.”

“Your Papa was just worried,” the man -Jeong Yunho, not Youknow- tells her. His voice goes completely different, soft and indulgent. Then he darts a look at me. “Sorry! Should I not. Talk to her?”

Oh, shit. My face is burning. “It’s fine. I- It’s fine. I’m the one who’s sorry. Really. I apologise. I overreacted.”

“No, no,” Yunho is saying. He’s backing up slightly, and even laughing a little. 

The man looks relatively unruffled, for someone who was just mistaken for a child abductor, and shouted at. “It’s understandable, you were worried. It’s all right, I’m not offended. There are a lot of crazy people in the world these days.” 

I want the floor to swallow me whole, except that Cherry will be fatherless then, and we can’t have that. I choose to take a deep breath, and: “I must apologise. I only took my eyes off of her for one second. And-”

I pause in the midst of my verbal self-flagellation. “Did you say _she_ came up to you?”

His hand is out of his hair, and rubbing against his nape. “Yes? There was a tug by the side of my trousers when I was looking at the chicken fillets, and there she was.”

I stare at him. Then I turn my gaze back to my daughter, who shrinks, and tightens the hold she’s got on my neck.

“Rice Cake,” I snap. 

She cringes a little, and then -of all things!- darts a look at Yunho. “I went three squares back!”

“I am waiting for an explanation, Rice Cake,” I say slowly. Threateningly.

She looks at him again, and turns to whisper in my ear. It’s perfectly audible to myself, Yunho, as well as the two aunties who are still by the pork. “Sorry, Papa. Youknow is very pretty. I want to touch his face. But we have to be friends first, since we don’t talk to strangers. So I introduced myself.”

I choke on air. Yunho laughs.

\--

I’m still lecturing her when we’re in the car and halfway back to our flat. 

She’s sulking in her booster seat at the back. I crane my neck to make eye contact with her.

“Look at me, Cherry,” I enunciate. She ignores me, choosing instead to play with her fingers.

I glare at her down-turned head through the rear-view mirror. “Cherry!” 

She looks up, then.

Her eyes are wide and teary, her bottom lip is sticking out, and her ponytail is now lopsided. She’s scrunched her hands so much on her frock that the skirt is now hopelessly rumpled. 

Softening despite myself, I clear my throat, eyes back on the road. “Do you understand why Papa is angry?”

She’s silent. I glance at the rear-view mirror again. Her bottom lip has grown fatter.

It’s a good thing we’re turning back into our complex. I don’t say anything more, until I’ve pulled the car into my parking space, and I’ve shut off the engine. 

She’s sniffling a little, and back to looking down. It’s one of her usual tricks, when she knows she’s in the wrong and yet she wants to head Papa off at his own nagging.

It’s also effective, even though I’ve been faced with that face of hers for years, and you’d think I’ll be immune by now.

My mother laughs very hard whenever she’s subjected to the sight of me being on the receiving end of Cherry’s fits of temper, and crying jags. 

“You deserve it,” she always crows, usually to some relative or other, “she got those eyes from him! At least our sweet darling Cherry cries less- she inherited that backbone from her mother. I thought he was made of tears, the way he just kept crying and crying and crying-”

I unbuckle my seatbelt and open my car door, to settle at the back with her, instead.

“Cherry,” I say now. I gentle my tone. “Rice Cake, baby.”

She looks up again at that, although she’s still not quite looking straight at me. I’m still in the doghouse.

I reach forward despite myself, and brush away a tear clinging to her lashes, wet and spiked. She gets that from me, too. “Do you understand why Papa is angry, baby?”

“I shouldn’t have talked to Youknow,” her voice is small and subdued.

“And why is that?” I persist.

She twists her fingers together, and recites dully, “because he’s a stranger, even though I introduced myself. We don’t talk to strangers.”

“We don’t follow strange men around, Rice Cake, no matter how pretty we think they are,” I untie her ponytail and comb through the curling tangles with my fingers, before re-tying it at a higher angle. I cough a little, thinking of Yunho’s hearty laughter at being called ‘pretty’ by a child, back at the supermarket. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she says grudgingly. She’s still pouting. 

Silently, I admit to myself she isn’t quite wrong and she’s absorbed at least half of my teachings on politeness and courtesy. There’s also that she’s got good taste in men, aesthetic-wise; although I’m _never_ telling her that. 

My adrenaline spike from nearly losing her is still running high. We were just lucky that Yunho didn’t try anything nefarious.

I didn’t let her touch his face in the end even after her little confession. Yunho had offered, when he had finally stopped laughing, and we -the adults- had exchanged belated introductions. He had said he was glad he at least knew the name of the man who all but accused him of being a paedophile.

My fingers curl a little into themselves from recollected embarrassment. 

But still. She’s a little too young to be chasing after boys! ‘After university’ will be a more acceptable age, when she’s settled properly into a job.

My musings about her future are interrupted, when she worms her sticky little hand into mine. 

At least I know I’m forgiven.

  
  


\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the interest shown to the prologue and to Rice Cake! Will definitely respond to those comments, but wanted to fling up #1 just for some of the things mentioned to make sense. 
> 
> Comments are, as always, much love. x


	3. two

That should have been the end of it. Just another funny anecdote from Cherry’s childhood that I can milk shamelessly when she’s old enough to feel embarrassed, at the thought of trying to pick up strange men.

But we run into Jeong Yunho again, the very next week. 

It’s the weekend, and Cherry would have been visiting with her mother, except her mother’s not in Seoul right now.

“So it’s a last-minute business trip,” my ex-wife tells me over the phone. “There’s a regional summit, and I’ve got to attend. The vice-president of North Asia will be there. I need to put in some visibility on that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say by rote. What else can I say? “Shall I put Cherry on the phone?”

She doesn’t answer immediately; I hear her speak to someone else, muffled. She must have put her hand over the phone.

She comes back on then, “no, it’s fine, I’m already boarding. I just wanted to let you know, before you bring her over to mine tomorrow morning and end up ringing the doorbell for an hour before even thinking to phone. Tell her I love her! I’ll be back next week!”

“I’ll,” I say, and finishes at the dial tone. “Tell her, sure. Fly safe.”

\--

I finish explaining to Cherry the next morning, who takes it better than I expected. Then again, it’s not the first time it’s happened.

My fault. I squash the old stirrings of guilt. 

“Okay,” Cherry says easily, and tilts her head. She's used to not seeing her mother. “Can we go for pancakes then, Papa?”

I open my mouth, a denial automatic on my tongue, and pauses. 

“You promised last week,” my daughter continues. She’s got a frightfully good memory when it comes to promises being made to her. I’m convinced that in her past life, she must have been some elder god or supernatural deity that’s very used to people crying out promises to her and smiting them when they renege.

“Papa had to go back to office on Wednesday,” the elder god in my life persists, “when it was pancakes day. So we didn’t eat pancakes for tea.”

My column with GQ Korea gives me plenty of flexibility. I can write anywhere, and my productivity levels are actually higher at home. I’m lucky that my editor and I have a pretty good system going on. He’s plenty sympathetic to my status at being a single parent, so most of the time I work from home.

Some days, Cherry actually comes home later than me, because I don’t leave the flat much except to bring her to kindergarten, which takes up all of her weekday mornings and then some. 

That particular Wednesday, however, I had to call my younger sisters and beg one of them to pick Cherry up instead, because I had to cover a colleague for a Cover Feature interview, and the celebrity in question insisted on meeting in Cheongdam-dong. 

In the end, I came home to a snoozing sister, and Cherry bouncing off of the walls, high on too much candy and television. 

But yes; there were no pancakes.

“Pancakes,” Cherry repeats. She’s looking at me very intently, head cocked.

I make the choice.

“Fine,” I relent, and she cheers. I point at my face, and say, "what do you say, now?"

“Yay!” She cries, scampering to where I'm sat on the floor, to buss a kiss against my cheek. Then she's off to her room. “Thank you, Papa! I want to wear my Anna dress!” 

\--

We make our way to our favourite cafe on foot.

Because it’s early summer, and it’s the weekend, we walk. Weekend traffic in Gangnam is atrocious, and walking means we’ll reach early enough that it still counts as breakfast.

We're a little slow, because Cherry's fussy, and she doesn't want to get the floor-length of her Anna dress dirty.

The first person I see when we enter, is none other than the man Cherry had tried, and failed to pull at the supermarket. The man I basically accused of being a child predator.

Yunho. Jeong Yunho.

He’s standing at a table by the large bay window, hands in his pockets and talking to a lady, who’s seated at said table. Even though it’s Saturday morning, they’re both in suits. The one he's wearing -moulded rather lovingly over his shoulders- is black today. The red lanyard is still around his neck. 

I duck my head instinctively, and shoot a glance at my daughter, who’s holding my hand and gaping up at the desserts housed inside the display window by the counter.

She hasn’t seen him yet. Good. 

There’s a half-baked plan in my head, to maybe go to another cafe, to have naengmyeon for breakfast instead, to be _elsewhere_. Just somewhere else, where I don’t have to relieve my embarrassment of the events from the previous week.

“Papa, can we have cake instead?” My daughter stops staring at the display window, and turns her eager little face up to me.

I seize upon the opening she’s given me unknowingly. “How about we have something else for breakfast, baby,” I start, but I’m out of luck.

“Changmin?” His voice is right behind me.

I turn reflexively, and curse myself in my head.

“Oh, it _is_ you!” Yunho is smiling at me, eyes crinkled and teeth white. “I thought so, but-”

“Youknow!” Cherry interrupts, and lets go of my hand in her excitement.

I look down. Oh, shit. She’s practically got stars in her eyes.

“Hi, Cherry,” He’s turning his smile to her, and double shit, it’s morphing from the merely friendly greeting he gave me, to something softer. _He_ ’s got stars in his eyes, too. 

It’s more than a little disconcerting, because he’s only very slightly shorter than me and that expression shouldn’t be appearing on a man with shoulders like that.

“Stop it, both of you,” I say, and balk a little, when they both turn equally wounded eyes on me. At least Yunho’s aren’t wide and already wet like my daughter’s.

“He’s too old for you, don’t even think about it,” I tell my spawn crossly, and we’re treated to the sight of Yunho throwing his head back in laughter. 

I stare a little. Cherry’s right. He’s rather pretty. And then I shake myself. 

What? Cherry has to get her love of pretty things -and pretty people- from somewhere.

But I, unlike her, have the self-control to keep my own musings private. Thus my face is calm, whilst my child is practically vibrating out of her skin.

She’s learnt her lesson, though, and her hands are clutching at the knee of my jeans instead. Her body however, is leaning so far towards Yunho that I’m surprised she hasn’t toppled over. 

“Sorry, Cherry,” Yunho’s telling her, exaggeratedly woebegone. He’s standing a very respectable two feet away, probably because the neurotic fit I had thrown at him -and the entire meat section- last week is still fresh in his memory. “Your Papa says you and I, we’re impossible.”

Two feet means that he’s near enough for me to eye discreetly the badge he’s got hanging off of his lanyard in front of his chest. I squint a little at the teal-and-blue logo dominating it, above the little picture of his face.

I can’t quite make out the fine print, though. _P r o s e-_

The tugging at my jeans drag me back to the conversation at hand, and I look down again. 

My daughter has the Look on her face that she gets, when she’s deciding if she Should Have A Tantrum. 

I make the choice to head that off early. Glancing up and around, at the largely empty tables in the cafe, “what pancakes do you want, Rice Cake? Shall we go sit down and think about it?”

She blinks. Pancakes apparently trump Jeong Yunho in her book. “Yes!”

\--

We head to a table tucked in an alcove, closer to the back of the cafe. 

Somehow, Yunho’s talking to me, and our conversation continues, such that he’s standing by our table. I’m too embarrassed to sit down. It’ll be too impolite. Cherry’s looking at the pictures on the menu, and sneaking glances up at Yunho that she thinks I don’t catch. 

“I just have something I’m curious about,” Yunho is saying, while I push Cherry to sit squarely back on her seat, because she’s leaning too far to the side, to gaze at him. “If you don’t mind me asking? You can refrain from answering, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Oh? Go ahead,” I say distractedly, and frowns at my daughter. “Well? Which pancakes would you like, Rice Cake?”

“That,” Yunho points out. 

“Let me think, Papa,” Cherry huffs, and flips back to the front of the menu. She’s still darting little looks up at Yunho from beneath her lashes.

“Why don’t you sit down,” I tell him, exasperated.

“Why do you call her Rice Cake,” he asks at the same time. 

We startle, and look at each other. 

“It’s just a baby nickname of hers,” my ears are hot with embarrassment. “She likes it.”

“Sorry, that came out really rude,” his words overlap mine, again. 

We both snap our mouths shut, and gesture for the other to continue.

“It’s my little name,” Cherry pipes up, unsolicited. I suppose she’s the one best equipped to answer this, given that those belong to her, after all. “Cherry is my big name, and Papa has Rice Cake as my little name. Papa likes food names. Papa likes food.”

A beat of silence, and two. 

Our gazes meet, and we both start laughing.

\-- 

Yunho leaves the cafe soon after, because he’s got to head back to work.

Cherry is the one who looks most bemused, when he makes his excuses. I’m too busy cutting up her pancakes for her. “It’s the weekend. Papa says it’s rest days!”

“No rest for the wicked,” Yunho tells her, scrunching his face into a frown. He’s squatting on his haunches so that he and my daughter can converse eye-to-eye. 

He slides a quick glance at me, and dares to pat her on the head, a swift barely-there tap. “Youknow has got bad people to fight.”

Her eyes are rounding in interest. Oh, no. 

I think back to how she’s forced me to sit through umpteenth replays of how the people of Arendelle had arrested Hans after Anna thaws out. Please don’t let her pretty stranger be an upholder of justice, too.

Her pancakes are done and I’m praying hard in my head. I slide her plate back in front of her, with the quiet instruction, “don’t talk while you eat, Rice Cake.”

She doesn’t take the bait. Her eyes are still firmly fixed on him. “Youknow!”

“Cherry,” I interrupt. My tone is stern enough that she tears her eyes away reluctantly, to look at her long-suffering Papa, when he’s talking. “His name is Yunho.”

Next to us, Yunho straightens a little in surprise. He’s still balanced on the balls of his feet, in a crouch.

I raise my eyebrow at her. “What do we call people who are Big People, like Papa?”

“Uncle or Auntie,” she replies. And then the scamp actually has the temerity to smile up at him, and gesture for him to come closer.

He shoots another look at me, and does so cautiously. Maybe he’s terrified I’ll scream at him again.

She tells him in her Outside Voice, “so I guess we’re friends now, Uncle Youknow. Since Papa said I can call you Uncle. It is polite.”

I had reminded her of her manners in a bid for her to actually mind her manners, and mind her Papa. I failed on both counts.

Yunho, however, looks hopelessly charmed. 

He opens his mouth to say something, but we never find out what it is, because there’s a loud chirp from his pocket. He pulls out his phone to look at the screen. Then he turns in the direction of where his table mate was sat at. 

She’s standing now, and tapping at her watch. Her shoulders lift up and down in an exaggerated shrug.

Yunho winces, and turns back to us whilst getting to his feet. I’m done cutting up my own pancakes, so I look back up at him.

Cherry’s eyes have never even left his person. Her pancakes are still sliced up in the neat eighths I made.

“Fighting bad people happens on weekends, too?” I ask, before he even says anything. It’s a little rude of me, but my curiosity is killing me. Yes, I’m nosy. Call it an occupational hazard.

He’s standing near enough now for me to read his work pass, but the side with the logo is faced away, so it’s just blank leather, and that’s not helpful.

“Ah,” he says, and laughs a little. “Well, paperwork to fight bad people needs to happen on weekends, so the actual fighting goes smoother on the weekdays.”

He must read my desire to pry on my face, because he adds, a little abashed for some reason. “I work in the Ministry of Justice-”

It clicks. That logo.

“Geomchal,” I blurt. So Cherry’s very pretty Youknow is a prosecutor! 

“That, yes, yes, I work in the Seoul Central office,” he says, running a hand in his hair.

Opposite me, Cherry is still quietly staring up at him. 

I flick a glance at my besotted daughter, and then back up at him. “Good to know that my daughter’s taste in men runs towards ‘very pretty’ ones, and with brains to boot, too.”

I’m being factual, and more than a little sarcastic, because her eyes are practically glued to his person, with how hard she’s staring at him.

But it seems to have gone awry. Looking back at Yunho, I expect him to be laughing at her expense. Instead, he looks… almost shy? 

I blink, and review again what I said, in my head. 

Oh. Oops. 

Before I can clarify, his phone chirps again. He doesn’t even pull it out, choosing instead to turn and call out to his table-mate, “yeah, thirty seconds!”

To us, he just smiles, and offers a rushed, “that's my colleague, sorry, it was good seeing you two again, I’ve to head off now, bye Changmin, bye Cherry, be good to your Papa!”

He hurries off after, steps brisk and quick. He catches his briefcase from midair, when his table-mate tosses it at him. He says something to her, and she turns too, to wave at us.

Then they’re both gone through the cafe’s glass doors, with a trilling tinkle of door chimes. 

It happens so fast that Cherry can’t even start wailing like she did, when I carried her off in the supermarket that first time we met Yunho.

Now, we’re both silent. I pick up my fork and knife again, and stare at my bacon cheddar pancakes.

Cherry takes three bites of her strawberry pancakes before she swallows and asks, considering, “is Uncle Youknow a policeman, Papa?”

“Something like that,” I murmur.

There’s a funny little quiver in my stomach. I feel off-balance.

It shouldn’t bother me that it was a meeting purely by chance, and we didn’t even exchange numbers. We shouldn’t need to exchange numbers, because he’s just a stranger my child tried to pick up at the local supermarket. 

We were -are- lucky that he doesn’t appear to be a crook, but there’s no reason to extend the acquaintance, just because he’s not a child abductor, after all. There are corrupt prosecutors, anyway.

Even when I tell myself that again, very firmly, the odd little feeling in my stomach doesn’t quite dissipate.

  
  


\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will say nothing except I wish Shim Changmin to be the happiest and healthiest that he will be, and he owes no one his life, but himself. <3  
> Comments are love. Everyone stay safe and healthy, wherever you are. xx


	4. three

“Have you thought of getting Cherry a new mother,” my father asks blandly one Thursday, which is when we do our habitual weekly family dinners. 

They used to happen on Sundays, a routine that began when I got married, and went on when Cherry was first born. Sundays were better for my parents, because they had to teach their respective sets of students from Mondays to Fridays, and my mother offered -is still offering- tuition on Saturdays.

Now Cherry goes over to her mother’s for the majority of Saturdays and Sundays, and she’s usually too knackered to sit properly at the dining table and make conversation by the time she’s dropped off with me in the evenings. 

So Thursdays it now is. The two of them are retired now anyway, and weekdays are no longer a mad rush. 

I choke on my rice, and a mouthful of my mother’s japchae. 

Next to me, Cherry’s chewing on a piece of bulgogi. She’s not speaking, because we don’t eat and talk at the same time, and she knows that.

But her eyes are round little dark cherries, darting to my face, and then my father’s.

“Dear!” My mother hisses over the sound of my coughing, and tilts her head. “Not in front of the _iceray akecay_.”

My father is undeterred. He’s already finished eating, his bowl of rice polished clean. “I’m just saying.”

Typically my father and I get along. He’s always raised me to mind my parents, and mind my manners. Much like how I’m attempting to bring Cherry up now. 

Even as a teenager, I’ve never pulled stunts like running away from home, or going behind their back to do drugs or smoke, or even dared to think about slacking off on my studies.

We’ve only ever fought once before in my memory, and it wasn’t even really a fight. I was graduating, and wanted to sit down and have a drinking session with him, man-to-man, no holds barred.

Instead my old man's response to my invitation was to lecture me on the potential tolls alcohol can wrought upon a body, going on until my mother shoved him aside. We commandeered his study that night, and she was the one to polish off four bottles of makgeolli with me in the end. 

I tamp down a flare of surprised irritation, now. “What brought this on?”

Cherry’s finished her piece of bulgogi and set her chopsticks down. She opens her mouth.

I pick up another piece of meat, and put it in her bowl.

She looks at the meat, and then at me.

I raise my eyebrow at her.

Her gaze darts to my father again, and then to me. 

I nudge a finger against her bowl. 

With great reluctance, she picks up her chopsticks again, and shoves the entire piece into her mouth. Her cheeks bulge.

“Not so fast!” My eyes bulge, too. “You’ll choke, Rice Cake. Slowly!”

She meets my gaze, and slows down, until she looks like an exaggerated pantomime of someone eating, small mouth glistening with oil and cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s.

“This,” my father says, over the sound of my spawn’s very loud, very blatant chewing. “You need someone to help mind her too, so you can tag-team. Look at you, boy. You’ll parent yourself to an early death, with how high-strung you are over her.”

My youngest sister starts laughing. My mother’s got her head in her hands, and my middle sister is the only one who’s still making a pretence of eating dinner, although the corner of her mouth is twitching suspiciously.

“Begging your pardon, Father,” I say, insulted despite knowing that he doesn’t quite mean it as a criticism. “I can mind her myself. I-”

“Not in front of the r-i-c-e c-a-k-e,” my mother repeats again, very firmly.

\--

We don’t finish the conversation, until my youngest sister drags Cherry off to marathon Pororo after dinner, and the rest of us cram ourselves into my father’s study.

“Only half an hour, please!” I shout after them from the study’s entrance, and turn back to my nearest and dearest, cross. 

The fight’s already begun. The battle-lines are pretty clearly drawn.

“I was only asking,” my father is defending himself. He never stood a chance.

“-a lot of hard work to get to where he is,” my mother is already ranting. “It’s not like he’s letting her run around amok all grubby, look at how well she’s growing, and he has a lucrative enough career that builds itself around her, how dare you strip my son’s efforts away like this-”

“-Big Brother is a shitty lover,” my sister is chiming in, a mournful Greek chorus by herself, “girls always think he’s easy-going, but it’s just they haven’t seen his stubborn streak yet, and why would you want to wish him on another woman? Just leave him alone, he’s happy enough with Cherry and being married to his job and playing with his stupid Legos at home-” 

“Hey,” I say, mildly. I should feel insulted, but it’s not like she’s not speaking the truth. 

There was a period of time when Cherry was growing up from wailing for a bottle and falling flat on her face, to being able to walk and talk. Then everyone in my life simultaneously thought of getting Changmin Back In The Game and getting my non-existent groove back.

Yes, including Cherry’s mother. But she gave up pretty quickly, compared to the rest of them. She of all people knows how stubborn I can get. I just pick my battles.

The resulting months were a prolonged disaster where I went on the blind dates everyone and -literally- their mother(s) had arranged, and sat there and just talked about Cherry, until the ladies all went away. 

At least the food was good, and it had helped me land a few restaurants and cafes to talk about in two consecutive issues of my column.

“Wait wait all right all right,” my father is blustering. “It was just a thought, no need to jump down my throat altogether. I just thought maybe she needed a mother, is all.”

“She already has a biological mother,” I state dryly. “Who loves her enough, in her own way. And if you mean she needs an immediate maternal presence in her life, well.”

I point my finger at my mother, who puffs her chest out in pride. Then I move it to my middle sister, who preens; and then at the study door, in the direction of the imp that’s indulging my child with an anthropomorphic penguin dancing on the telly right now. 

My father sighs.”All right. It was just me opening my fat mouth.”

But I’m not finished.

“If,” I continue ruthlessly, “by ‘needed a mother’, you mean that she needs more love in her life, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m mother and father enough for her.” 

Silence. 

Then my mother covers her face with both hands, but not before we all hear a very loud sniff. “My boy has grown up-”

My sister is alarmed. “Look what you’ve done! Both of you! Oh, Mummy, don’t, it’s all right, don’t forget, Big Brother is old now, he’d better be grown up, or else, no no, _you_ are not old, he's all but rotting, you’re the youngest, the prettiest, the most radiant-”

\--

My hope that Cherry will have forgotten the conversation at the dining table dies a quick death, as we drive home.

I don’t even know why I bother. She’s a clever girl, my little Rice Cake, with a memory like a steel trap. And she’s inherited from me the same damnable sense of curiosity, although she’s a lot more blatant about it.

“Why did Grandfather ask if Papa is getting Cherry a new mother?” She asks bluntly from behind me, strapped in her booster seat. “I have Mother.”

“Grandfather was just joking,” I say, eyes on the looming traffic light. “He didn’t mean it, Rice Cake. Sometimes adults say things they don’t mean, and they’re jokes.”

“Oh,” she says, and doesn’t continue, so I reckon us done with that particular line of conversation, until we’re parked and walking out to the complex’s foyer. 

It’s late, and the roads are emptier, so the way home takes less time today.

She waves a habitual hello to the doorman, who waves back as always, cooing. It makes her happy, and she dances, or as she calls it, “swooshing on the squares”, while we wait for the lift doors to open.

We’re in the lift, and she looks up at me, and says solemnly, “I don’t need a new one. It wasn’t a good joke.”

“A new what, baby?” I ask, distracted, my thoughts more on the piece I’m tweaking for my editor. The deadline is tomorrow and there’s still something about the final section that doesn’t sit quite right with me. “You can’t have another Frozen water bottle, you’ve got too many of those.”

“No,” she says, and tightens her hold on my hand. “I don’t need a new Mother. Papa’s enough.”

I blink down at her.

She looks up. 

Her eyes are big and round under the lift’s fluorescent lights, and her pupils are huge and dark.

“Your eyes,” my middle sister had said before. “Cherry is you, but cuter and sweeter in miniature human form. Even one of her eyes is very slightly rounder and bigger than the other, like yours. Look at her nose, and her mouth. The way she sits, sometimes. She's all yours. Why do you think _she_ left? She never stood a chance. You never gave her a chance.” 

She’s still friends with my ex-wife, as far as I know. I don’t mind. My ex is a good person. And it was my fault.

As I tuck an errant curl behind my daughter’s ear, I smile despite myself. I can’t bring myself to regret her, or us. 

She gave me Cherry, after all. 

My daughter is still talking. She’s warming to the subject. “You don’t need to buy me a new one.”

I can't quite stifle my laugh. “People aren’t presents. And no, Papa’s not planning to buy a new Mother for you. I spend too much on you already.”

\--

She ignores my teasing, and waits patiently while I key in the pass-code to my flat. Then we’re in, and it’s time for baths and teeth-brushing and a night-time story, or two.

Tonight is a story about a jar of mayonnaise, and the adventures he goes on with his friends, which includes a morning trip to the supermarket, and having milk at a quaint little cafe. It’s all so sweet that my teeth nearly ache, and I yearn for a glass of wine and the latest copy of David Baldacci’s new thriller, which I’ve got on my bed stand, still cellophane-wrapped. 

Oh, well. I'll live. Cherry likes this particular series. 

Maybe it’s the talk of supermarkets and cafes, and somewhere in her little head there are connections being made. After the ending, Cherry looks up at me, while I smooth her hair back and switch on her night-light. “But can Papa buy him for me? As a present?” 

“Who?” I say, pausing while slotting tonight’s book choice back onto her shelves. “I told you, Rice Cake. People aren’t presents.”

“You know,” she says, ignoring me. She pokes at her covers, and I pull them up and over to her chin. 

I can feel my eyebrows drawing together. “No, I don’t know. People can’t be-”

“Uncle Youknow,” she interrupts me, and the words stopper themselves at the back of my mouth. 

Unbidden, black hair, a beaming smile, and long legs come to my mind.

Oh. She means her pretty prosecutor boyfriend. 

When he had squatted down to talk to her, that one time we bumped into him at the cafe, his black trousers had stretched very attractively over his thighs.

It’s a detail that still remains with me even now. I don’t know why. 

“No,” I say honestly, and bite back a laugh when she scowls. 

“Why?” she demands, but it’s whiny rather than imperious. Her eyelids are already fluttering low. 

Thank fuck for routines, and the body clock of young children.

“I don’t know where he is,” I say, still honest, and spreading my hands out. It’s true, I don’t. We never did exchange numbers, and it’s been a month since we met him by chance, that second time at the cafe. “And I don’t think he’s for sale, baby. He might think Papa is bad people, if I try that.” 

What are the odds, anyway. Seoul’s pretty large. We’ll probably never see him again. What seems to be Cherry’s first love is likely destined to end in distance and heartbreak.

She’s not quite content with my answer. “But I want Uncle Youknow to…”

She nods off in mid-sentence.

I chortle, and smooth a thumb over the stubborn jut of her little chin, and press a kiss at her temple. She smells of baby powder, and her shower gel, and the new baby body lotion I bought for her last month. 

“Sweet dreams, Rice Cake,” I whisper, and tiptoe out of her bedroom.

  
  


\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Father's Day!
> 
> Comments are love. x


	5. four

What are the odds, indeed. I always knew my child is intelligent, but maybe she has got a super-powered will, too. 

In any case, months go by. It’s autumn, and my youngest sister and I are by the Han River.

She’s got Cherry up in her arms, despite my repeated protests that she’s old enough to walk on her own. 

Currently my daughter is biting viciously into a truly frightening amount of strawberry ice cream. 

“Slowly, Rice Cake,” I say, and pull out another hot pack from my pockets, to stuff into hers. 

I’ve dressed her very prettily today, in a hooded winter parka, light blue and puffy. It pleases her very much, because it is the same exact shade of Elsa’s new gown in the latest Frozen film. 

My sister is snorting, “it’s twenty degrees out, you’ll roast her alive!”

“It’s hot, Papa,” Cherry complains in agreement, and fumbles to pull the hot pack out of her pockets again, to give to her aunt. She’s already demolished half of the very large ice cream cone, and it’s only been about a minute since that was put into her greedy little hands.

“Yes, but you bought her ice cream,” I argue, and my sister rolls her eyes. “Because it’s perfect autumnal weather to eat ice cream. Stop being such a worrywart.”

I would have protested more, but Cherry does a full body wriggle then. Her aunt very nearly drops her. That’s about sixteen kilos worth of live weight, shifting and antsy.

"Cherry," my sister squeaks.

"Rice Cake," I start forward.

“Youknow!” The imp in question screeches, and flings an arm out, ice cream forgotten. Half of it splatters onto the pavement in a wide arc.

I don’t quite hear her, because I’m biting a curse back and reaching for the pack of wet tissues in my bag, to clean up the mess.

There’s a pair of shiny black oxfords in my peripheral vision. I don’t connect the dots, until I straighten and come face-to-face with a very familiar-looking man. 

Oh.

My sister has her arms around Cherry, but barely. She’s still clinging to her aunt’s hips, but she’s also got her hands outstretched, and one of them -sticky with strawberry ice cream and cone bits- is now engulfed in the hand of a man that I recognise, despite the months that have gone by since our last coincidental meeting. Yunho.

There’s an interesting expression on my sister’s face, even as she grapples to not drop Cherry, with the admonishment, “Cherry, _no_.”

Yunho’s dressed in another suit today.

It’s navy. The white shirt he has got on also features a tie of the very same shade of navy, slightly loosened. His lanyard is still about his neck, and he’s got his phone in his other hand, and no briefcase in sight. 

His hair looks like it's grown since we last bumped into him. It's swept back from his forehead. His legs are as long as ever.

I take all these in and more, in a single glance. Maybe some parts of my brain shorts out from the surprise of actually seeing Yunho again, because my mouth goes, “oh, look, Rice Cake, it’s your boyfriend.”

Yunho’s eyes had crinkled into a grin directed at Cherry. Now they widen as he looks at me, and I see that they’re slightly uptilted at the corners, like a fox’s. Then he overcomes his surprise to laugh, so they’re crinkled again.

That sets Cherry off in a frenzy of “Uncle Youknow Uncle Youknow Uncle Youknow”s. My sister has to hitch her higher, with a huffy, “oh, now you’ve done it!”

I sober, and say sharply, “ _Stop it_ , Cherry. Your ice cream. ”

She quietens at that, and my sister tucks an arm under her knees, grumbling, “silly girl. Do you want me to drop you?” 

I smile at Yunho, then. “Hello.”

“Hi,” he returns, although there’s an unidentifiable edge to his own smile now. “Fancy meeting you here.” 

“It’s a good day for a stroll,” I respond, and wow, this is the most banal conversation ever. 

Next thing you know, we’ll start talking about the weather.

“Nice weather,” he offers back, and our lips twitch as we look at each other. 

He breaks first, and roars with laughter.

\--

We learn that because it’s autumn, Yunho has a habit of coming to stroll by the river, to ruminate on cases during lunchtime. The cool breeze coming in from the river helps one think, or so he claims.

I frown. “Lunchtime is for eating lunch.”

Cherry is still straining towards him, and offering him her almost demolished ice cream cone to share. My child is hopeless in her infatuation. 

He starts at my comment, and one hand comes up to brace at his nape. He’s done this a few times, since the supermarket. I think it’s an unconscious gesture of his, when he’s embarrassed, or self-conscious.

“Ah, yes,” he’s saying, “you’re right, I should get lunch. I’ll leave you and your wife be. I’m so glad I saw you, Cherry-”

“I’m not his wife,” my sister, hitherto silent, interrupts suddenly. It’s said at a volume that makes Cherry stop making googly eyes at Yunho, and turn back to her aunt, instead. 

Yunho breaks off in the middle of his sentence. He looks nonplussed.

“I’m his sister,” my sister says, even louder. She’s smiling very intently at Yunho, and the look on her face is not unlike the one that’s usually affixed on Cherry’s face, in all our encounters with the man.

There’s a frisson of foreboding running up my spine. She can’t be.

Yunho is blinking. “Ah-”

My sister continues, with a tone like she is an announcer at some sporting event or other, “we’re related. By blood. This man is my brother. He’s single. Very single. Not currently married. Divorced, but don't worry about that. It's not recent, and him and his ex are friends again.”

Fuck, she is. I make a strangled noise.

“Oh,” Yunho says. The poor man looks confused.

“Papa says we shouldn’t shout, Auntie,” Cherry informs her aunt, and looks back at Yunho in concern. “Why is Uncle Youknow leaving again?” 

I step on my sister’s foot very hard, and smile pleasantly at Yunho.

She doubles over in a curse, and I take the chance to shift in front of her, and reach out to grasp him by the elbow of his suit jacket, and pull him forward a few steps, to better save him from the insanity.

“Sorry!” I blabber, “the family is a little odd -they're under-socialised, poor things- that’s why I don’t bring them out too often, haha! Quickly now, maybe you should head for your lunch, before Cherry wails about being abandoned again-”

He cuts through my verbal fumblings with a quiet, “they’re charming. You’re charming.”

I fall silent. My fingers are still at his elbow. 

He looks down at them, and I let go, like I’ve been burnt. “Sorry about that!”

“I,” he starts, and his hand is back up, rubbing once more at his nape. His hair falls into his eyes, and I stare at his other hand, as it comes up, to push his fringe back.

He has very large hands. 

“It’s the third time, and I kind of believe in fate, so. You can say no,” he says a little abruptly, “or tell me if this is untoward. But since it’s the third time we’ve bumped into each other; I was hoping I could get your number.”

I blink at him. I must have heard it wrong. I must have heard him wrong.

“Did you,” I find my voice. “Just ask me for my number?”

He looks at me, patient and smiling. “Yes.”

“Oh,” I say, very faintly. “Because you want to be my daughter’s boyfriend? Please don’t. She's a bit too young, and you've been quite nice so far. I’m really really hoping you are not a paedophile.”

His gaze hasn't faltered. But now he's looking at me like I’ve got two heads.

The words coming out of my mouth finally register with me, and I balk. “That was a joke!”

It wasn’t, but he doesn’t need to know that.

Between my sister’s blunt declaration of being related to me and my current marital status (or lack thereof), and now this, he must think we’re all insane.

If he does, he’s not showing it. Instead Yunho’s smiling at me, and going, “Cherry’s very cute.”

“She is,” I agree, a swell of paternal affection overwhelming my awkwardness. 

Despite my fuck ups, and all things considering, my child turned out pretty all right. Even if she can be a little spoilt.

Marshalling myself, I take a deep breath, and make the choice. I’ll give him my number. 

I open my mouth.

“Her father’s cuter,” he says bluntly.

My face must be a mess, because it makes his smile widen, until he’s grinning at me, all crinkled eyes and white teeth and _pretty_.

I stare, speechless.

There’s a rustling behind me, and my sister is elbowing me aside, all bossy, “sorry, he is absolutely shit at relationships and talking to other people, that’s why Cherry’s mother dumped him, give me your phone, _I_ ’ll give _you_ his number-”

Maybe I should disown her. 

“It’s all right,” Yunho is reassuring her, and fuck, he’s giving her his phone, is this man not a public prosecutor, why is he so trusting, you don't just give strangers your phone like this, “we didn’t meet under the best circumstances, so it’s good that he’s cautious.”

“You’re Cherry’s lawyer boyfriend, aren’t you?” My sister is asking him, tapping rapidly on his phone, “the one she propositioned while they were on a grocery run? Big Brother’s told me all about that, and don’t worry. He definitely overreacted. It was his fault for letting her run off in the first place.”

What is wrong with the both of them? I should definitely disown her.

“What is wrong with the both of you,” I question. I am promptly ignored.

There’s a weight on my leg. I look down, befuddled.

Cherry’s clinging to my knee, because her aunt had set her down to meddle in my love(?) life. 

I smooth a hand over my daughter’s head. There’s wisps of hair already curling out from her French braid. Her ears are soft and velvet and slightly cool to the touch.

My own ears are hot and warm despite the fact that there's a bit of a chill sweeping in now, from the river. 

“Papa,” she whispers, tubby blue arms wound around my left calf, little feet braced on my trainer-clad foot.” Isn’t Uncle Youknow a stranger to Auntie? Why is she talking to him?”

I gape at her. She's not wrong.

“No, no,” her aunt says, coming back over. She’s already returning Yunho’s phone to him, and there’s an unholy gleam in her eye. “Papa introduced Uncle Youknow to Auntie in many, _many_ stories. Auntie is friends with Uncle Youknow now. Like you.”

Yunho is laughing helplessly. He's letting Cherry run to him, and squatting down for her to ask him the same question regarding his alleged friendships with the adults in this conversation. 

"Looks like we're all friends," my sister observes slyly, "except for Papa and Uncle Youknow. Oh, dear. Maybe Uncle Youknow should ring Papa from now on, then. To be friends. Since he has Papa’s number now."

“I am going to disown you,” I tell her, baring my teeth in a semblance of a smile.

\--

Things get confusing after that. 

Yunho and I text, on and off, after we have each other’s numbers. We're painfully polite to each other at first, and conversation starts bumbling in fits and starts. 

Oftentimes I have to walk away in the middle of a conversation, because Cherry’s asking about something or other, or she wants a snack, or she’s gone and wet the bed again, or it’s my editor spamming my inbox and nagging about deadlines. Or he texts halfway and vanishes, only to come back apologising from a long day at court, or hours spent through to shape evidence to work out a credible charge. 

It’s not a daily occurrence, our chats, because his job is hardly a walk in the park, and I’m busy myself, with my column and Cherry and well, life. 

Still, we keep in pretty frequent contact, to my own surprise. 

Sometimes, when I’m in the area near his office for work, and Cherry’s still in school, I drop him a text.

Sometimes, he’s free to actually have lunch, so we meet to eat, before he rushes back to his cases, and I meet my subjects for their interviews. 

It’s rarely deliberate, these encounters, but neither are they truly spur of the moment. 

We’re friends, I suppose. 

I’ve never been very good at being sociable, and more than one ex-classmate or old friend have accused me of vanishing from the surface of the earth.

But it’s an easy enough choice to keep texting Yunho back, and to keep talking to him. Maybe it’s the conversational topics; and how we can go from talking about the colour of Cherry’s vomit from too much candy, to the latest corruption scandal, though his tongue always only loosens on the latter after the news has been made public. 

More than once, I land on the news channel after dinner. Cherry, freshly bathed and dressed in her jammies, will point at the television screen and cry, “Uncle Youknow!” at the sight of him in yet another suit and tie, and speaking gravely into a sea of microphones. 

“You work in the Seoul Central office,” I mimic with mock gravitas what he had said back in the cafe, one such evening and down the line to him. 

I’ve got the late-night news on mute because Cherry’s already asleep in her room. 

He’s onscreen again, and the ticker tape running at the bottom of the screen summarises the conference he is giving in brutal, short points.

“I do,” he agrees, and huffs a chuckle. He sounds tired. “I didn’t lie about that.”

“Yes, but it’s also a bit of an understatement,” I point out, and squint at his face on screen. The press conference had occurred earlier in the afternoon, and the footage’s being replayed now.

He looks pale, and is made paler by the frequent camera flashes.

I get up from my sofa, to take a closer look at his face displayed in full 8k UHD glory. “Have you not been sleeping enough?”

“Ah,” he hedges.

“Let me rephrase that,” I say, and goes in search of my earbuds. The phone has grown overly warm against my ear, because of the duration of the call. “Have you been sleeping at all.”

“Spoken like a true journalist,” he murmurs, and laughs.

“Don’t call me that. I’m just a lifestyle columnist who likes to write about food and hiking trails and his own pretentious musings on life,” I say, tucking my earbuds into my ears. “And don’t avoid the question.”

There’s a pause, and:

“Not really,” he admits. “I snatch hours, here and there. It’s not just me. Our entire team is running on empty because of this case. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports. It’s been a rollercoaster since the indictment.”

“Well, Mister Hotshot Prosecutor, you’ve already gotten your guilty verdict,” I point out. “Does that mean you’re actually allowed to sleep, now?”

He laughs again. “My arm has been twisted by the Deputy Prosecutor General. I’m to go on block leave, before I immolate myself at my desk.”

“Good,” I scowl into thin air. I’m sure he can hear it into my voice. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> single dad au numbers ten parts in total, but don't be surprised when most of that are silly self-indulgent omakes...
> 
> I'm too stupidly soft for Cherry. Comments are as always love. x


	6. five.

Contact between us lapses for one full day. One full day of radio silence, and then he drops me a text on Sunday.

It’s late-ish in the morning, and the flat is empty save for me. 

Cherry’s off at her mother’s. I’m sorting through clean laundry right now, and rolling my eyes at myself. Horror of horrors, but I’ve actually allowed Cherry to amass two Elsa skirts, three Olaf jumpsuits, and a staggering total of seven Anna frocks, all in different designs.

I’m pretty sure my mother and my siblings are also to blame. At least half of her collection is their doing, if not more.

My phone chirps from where it's lying on the sideboard cabinet. 

I finish folding Cherry’s pajamas, before I meander over. I have a pretty good idea who it might be, because there are only so many people who text me at ten on a Sunday morning.

But I’ve been feeling off all day yesterday, due to the lack of contact. It’s a gnawing feeling in my stomach, and it scares me, a little. I may have gotten too used to talking to him on a regular basis, even if it’s only a text or two. 

I dither a little more, straightening the laundry room, and picking up the mess of Legos by the side of the living room. It’s a mixture of mine, and Cherry’s. Hers are the Frozen ones; mine are Star Wars themed.

Hers are back in her playbox, and mine up on the shelves, before I deign to pick up my mobile.

It is indeed Yunho, and he apologises for dropping off, because he had gone home very early Saturday morning after his team’s celebratory bar crawl, and went straight to bed. He’s only just woken up.

‘Good,’ I text in response. ‘Go eat a good meal. You’ve worked hard.’

My phone rings instead. 

I pick up, and my pulse picks up, too. “Good morning.”

“’Morning!” He responds, and he sounds better. Perky. “Are you busy?”

I cast a look around me at my flat, all straightened up. I had plans to open a bottle of red, and cue up Netflix. Instead, I choose to go, “no.”

“Want to grab a bite, Changminnie?” Is his cheery ask. “I am now a bum for the next two weeks! I can go anywhere you want, as long as it’s in Seoul.”

The way he phrases that sounds- 

I squash down dangerous thoughts very firmly.

Something milder -perhaps temporary insanity- prompts me to respond, “sure. I need a drink.”

\--

Texting him the address of my favourite pub, away from the usual nightlife district, I change out of my t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms to head there in my car.

Clear skies aside, today’s chilly for my standards, and I’ve bundled up into a coat and a scarf. At least the pub is heated. 

I duck into my usual alcove, sinking down to the sturdy wooden stool with a contented sigh.

The pint of my favourite blond ale barely lands in front of me before he does, too. 

For once, Yunho’s not in a suit. Instead, he’s in a cozy looking green jumper, and blue jeans. His hair is almost too long now, and parted to the side, black ends at the back brushing against the round collar of his jumper.

He looks pale and tired, since I saw him last the previous week. Worn.

Still, his eyes are bright, and he’s got a grin on his face, when he spots me.

“I didn’t think this was what you had in mind,” he says, looking around and marvelling, before slipping into the chair opposite mine. “It smells amazing!”

Yunho looks to my side, and his brow creases a little when he sees I am alone.

I offer, "it’s the weekend. She's at her mother's."

"Oh," he says, and the wattage of his grin dims slightly, and he scratches at his nape. He is a little embarrassed. "I did wonder, when you said you wanted a drink. I promise I'm not a child molester playing the long con with you."

"No," I say, more amused, and gladder than I should be, "you just look like you came to your playdate only to be told your friend ditched you. This is your friend’s favourite pub too, by the way. She likes to come here for brunch and chug orange juice in shot glasses.”

He’s snickering, one hand coming up to cover his face. 

I continue blithely, “I apologise for disappointing you. It's just your friend's uncool old man today." 

Tamping down on his snickers, Yunho rolls his eyes at me. "Well, uncool old man, any recommendations to the older but cooler man?"

"Just keep lying to yourself, fellow old man. That you even use 'cool' to describe yourself,” I jibe, and pass him the menu for Sunday’s specials. “Their lamb stew is good. Beer?”

“Ah,” he scans through the specials, and then straightens in his seat with a cheerful, “you know what? Why not? I’m not working tomorrow, anyway.”

It’s the most energetic I’ve seen him, even though his face is still pale and he really is visibly thinner than when we met last week.

I’ve come to realise that Yunho is typically prone to smiles and laughter, especially when confronted with Cherry, but today he’s positively bouncy.

“Like a Golden Retriever,” I utter out loud, and shake my head at his questioning smile. “Nothing. So what beer do you want?”

“Maybe you can recommend a choice,” He goes back to reading the menu intently and with focus, almost as though it’s extremely important evidence he’s come across at court. “I don’t often drink. Usually I’ve got to keep a clear head for the job. But when I go, I _go_.”

“Wow,” I say, wry, “does that mean you’re actually letting yourself go, now? Hair being let down and all? Was that what you did on Friday, other than sleep? Are you going to stumble around raving like a drunkard later?”

“Raving,” he chortles, and raises his eyebrows at me. “It’s fine. You won’t let me.”

\--

I had been teasing, but he does turn red-faced, and his words slow after only two beers.

Make that one-and-a-half, because his current pint of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout is only half-gone from his glass.

Already he’s bracing his chin with an elbow on the table. His gaze is hooded and his cheeks are flushed. No, his entire face is flushed. Even the whites of his eyes are a little pink.

The curve of his mouth is red and wet, from the beer.

“You weren’t joking, when you said you don’t drink often,” I say, and polish off the last mouthful of my Belgian Tripel. The barman catches my eye, and hurries to pour another pint.

He squints at my empty glass, and then at me. “Is that your… fifth?”

I don’t think he’s drunk. He’s too articulate for it. But his lack of tolerance is also obvious, given how he’s had barely two beers and he looks like he tossed back an entire line of soju bombs. 

“Sixth,” I reply, and nudge the still-warm tureen of lamb stew towards him. He barely ate while we were talking, first about his victorious case, and Cherry, and then about my latest column. No wonder he’s already that far gone. “Eat.”

“It’s delicious,” he agrees, but he only takes two mouthfuls, before he pauses again, spoon in hand, and drifts.

I’ve never seen him like this before. Our lunches have always been teetotaler, by virtue that we both have to head back to work after. Maybe bringing him to my favourite pub is hardly the best idea I've had.

He’s just so pink in the face, and his eyelids are at half-mast.

It’s a little amusing and a lot touching, especially when I think about how he had smiled and went, “you won’t let me.”

He’s still looking at his spoon very intently. There’s a bit of stew dripping off of it and he looks like he finds it endlessly fascinating. I catch the barman’s eye again, and gesture for another basket of bread.

I wave a hand in front of his face, “Yunho?”

When he looks up, his gaze is a lot clearer than I had anticipated. “You know what this is, right, Changmin?”

I’m not quite sure what he means. “What do you mean?”

“This,” he says, and points at me with the concave side of his spoon, then at himself. “Us.”

I blink. The jittery gnawing feeling in my stomach that has never quite gone away since I texted him back this morning intensifies. “Us?”

He lowers his eyebrows at me. “We’re dating. Right?” 

I blink again. 

He looks almost mulish, with those creased eyebrows, and an unblinking, narrow-eyed gaze. I wonder if he gives this look to the defendants he cross-examines in court. 

Perhaps I should not find this particular look hot. I do.

“I really like you,” he says. 

The gnawing in my stomach turns into outright churning. 

I haven’t felt like this in a long time, since before Cherry, and even earlier before, when I was still married. 

Earlier than. 

It’s been too long and Cherry has to come first in my list of priorities, so even after my marriage failed -after I failed- and well-meaning friends and family set me up for too many blind dates, it hasn’t been like this. 

There was no room for feelings like this. 

I haven’t felt like this, and I really shouldn’t be feeling like this.

At least not when it’s Sunday and nearly noon and we’re in a crowded pub. There are _people_. 

How do other people do this? Why is this so awkward? Do I just say ‘yes’? Does he mean it? With how red he is, maybe he’s drunk? People say strange things, when they’re drunk. Maybe he forgot we’re both men, because he’s drunk. If he’s only joking, do I say ‘no’? But he asked for my number voluntarily, by the river. What if he sobers up and he forgets what he asked? Was that a question? Did he just issue a statement at me? Am I supposed to respond if it is not a question?

The thoughts go around and around in my head, as we look at each other.

He stares and stares and stares, only to lean too hard against his elbow, which slips off the table. 

A laugh blurts itself out of me, as I startle.

Straightening, I put a hand out quickly, reflexes borne out of years of trying to head off Cherry’s scrapes, and manage to catch him in the forehead, before it meets the table.

It’s pretty warm to the touch. 

He sits back up, blinking. Even the tip of his nose is pink. “Wow. The beer is stronger than I thought.”

“Yes,” I say, a little breathless. A lot breathless. “Maybe we should continue this conversation when you’re sober.”

\--

“But I’m sober,” he insists, when we finish lunch and I all but twisted his arm to get into the passenger seat of my car.

Yunho came via public transport, and even though he keeps saying that he can always call a cab, something in me rebels at the thought.

He does look a little better, with more food in his stomach, and after the short walk in the autumnal chill to my car. But his face is still a few shades redder than how pale it was when he first sat down. And maybe I’m a bit of a coward who doesn’t quite want the conversation to end. 

Yet I have absolutely no idea how to restart that particular thread he brought up, in the pub.

We’re silent, sitting side-by-side in the car.

I turn the heater on, and then the engine. My car rumbles on with a purr.

From the corner of my eye, I can see he’s put his seatbelt on.

I clear my throat, and stare straight ahead at the road through the windshield. I can feel my ears warming up, in the stream of heated air from the vent. “Are you heading home? Give me your address, I’ll put it in the GPS-”

“Changminnie,” he says.

I turn in my seat towards him. 

Yunho looks at me, and reaches a hand to unfasten his seatbelt. His other hand comes up, and curves around the crook of my neck, where my shoulder and throat meet. 

“Changminnie,” he repeats. His face is very near to mine. 

I can see his eyelashes, long and straight and spiky against his cheeks. He’s got a very faint scar on the curve of his left cheek, where his cheekbone arches up to his eye. It’s faint, bumpy and upraised and white like only scar tissue from long ago can be. 

There’s a tiny black mole, on the left corner of his upper lip. 

I realise with some surprise that I want to lick it.

“I’m not drunk off of two beers,” he murmurs, soft, barely audible. I sway forward slightly, all the better to hear him. “You made me eat so much that I’m stuffed. The alcohol’s all soaked up now. I promise I’m not drunk.”

We’re so close that I can smell the fruit mint he filched from a bowl the pub owner’s got at the counter, when we had split the payment for lunch earlier. We’re so close that our noses are touching. 

“Changmin. I’m sober,” he says. “We’ve been dating for weeks, haven’t we?”

My fingers are tight about the divider between us, nails digging into the leather. 

I can’t help but look down at his lips, before I force my own gaze back up. 

He darts his tongue out, to wet them. 

I make myself focus on his eyes, despite the temptation to look down again. 

His fingers tighten against my nape, and scritch up slow into the back of my head, combing through my hair.

I shiver involuntarily, pressing back into the hold of his hand, the clutch of his fingers. 

My own hands hurt from how hard I’m gripping at the divider.

The edge of his mouth curls upwards. His lashes lower.

“Okay,” I say, more breath than sound. “You’re sober. I am, too.” 

Leaning forward, I make the choice to close the distance, and kiss him. 

It's easy. There's no other choice for me.

He tastes like strawberries, and mint.

  
  


**_\-- end._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /end the official Choices arc.
> 
> Now for the omakes, which was why I wrote this damn thing in the first place. Oops. 
> 
> Comments are love!


	7. おまけ: breaking the news

Let’s try this for a while, I tell him. 

Let’s just keep this private first, you might not be used to this, I say.

Let’s not say anything to other people because it’s likely you might run away screaming from a single dad and all his issues and his actual issue, is what I _don’t_ say, yet actually mean.

He hears me loud and clear, anyway. 

“I liked Cherry before I liked you,” Yunho points out, mild. But he respects my decision, and doesn’t push.

We’re both busy people, and I’m grateful that he has allowed me to set the pace of this thing. This relationship. 

There are three people in this relationship. I’m still surprised that he understands perfectly that he isn't first priority in my life.

He can’t be. Cherry is. 

Then again, maybe it’s the same for him. Him and his push for justice, and his willingness to do the right thing. 

Maybe I am second to that too. I’ve never asked. 

All in all, it terrifies me a little. How easy it is, to want to put in the effort in trying things out with him, and being with him.

\--

I look up one day in summer to realise that it’s been just past six months since we started this, and he’s still here.

We’re still here. 

“It’s been six months,” I say to him, surprised. We are, as usual, having lunch together, albeit at a later time than usual today.

“Six months, two weeks, one day, two hours and counting,” he counters from across the table, and wow, maybe it’s a bad idea after all, to date a prosecutor. 

I tell him that, just to see him laugh.

“You can remember things like this,” I snort, “but you can’t remember where your phone is, when you’re calling me?”

It was really quite educational, that particular phone call. 

Cherry was amusing herself with her Legos and building Arendelle a new citadel, when I picked up his call only to hear a panicked, “Changminnie, I think I lost my phone. I can’t find it anywhere in my flat! Do you think you can try to ring it for me?”

“If you've lost your phone,” I had said slowly, “then what are you using to ring me? You haven’t got a landline.”

Silence. Then he started laughing, and I waited, only to be hung up on, mid-cackle

A ‘SORRYYYYYYY!!!!!!! :c :c :c :c :c :c’ had flown its way into my text inbox five minutes after. 

He chortles at the memory now, one hand coming up to press at the bridge of his nose. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“You make it too easy,” I say, and eye his rice. He still has half a bowl left and his kimchi jjigae is all but demolished. “Are you going to finish that?”

“No,” he returns, and stares at me in outright fascination when I dump his leftover rice into the dregs of my naengmyeon soup, and stir. “Changmin-ah.”

I slurp up the concoction. “Yes?”

“Never mind,” he says, smiling. “I really don’t know where you pack it away at. How do you even still have those abs with all that eating!”

“Hey, this is only my second bowl of naengmyeon. I don’t want to waste the soup,” I protest. “Back during university days, I could eat two bowls of this, eight bowls of rice, have some galbi and still have room for pizza, after.” 

He just grins at me, and goes casually whilst I’m finishing up the rice, “do you want to have dinner together on Friday night?”

I’m living life dangerously and in blatant flouting of my own rules for Cherry; mumbling with my mouth full, “we have dinner together every Friday night. Am I cooking again?”

“That we do,” he says, calm and pleasant, “but maybe we should dine out. My parents will be up in Seoul that evening. They want to meet you. My father’s still getting used to the idea, but my mother thinks you’re handsomer than Won Bin.” 

I choke on a combination of rice and soup and air and shock.

\--

“Should I bring Cherry,” I ask him over the phone two nights later, still on this subject. “I feel like maybe we should proffer her up as an offering so your father doesn’t deck me over the appetizers, or something. Do they know about Cherry?”

The maddening man is too calm. “Of course not. She’s your child, and you’re subjected to your privacy. I won’t share on that unless I have your explicit permission. And my father won’t hit you. You're too tall and he’ll pull a muscle reaching and he won’t be able to golf then. Do _you_ want to bring Cherry?”

“Fuck, we haven’t even told her yet,” I fret, “Two days is not enough time. I’m not bringing Cherry.”

“It’s really up to you, Changmin,” he soothes, but I’m onto him. I can practically hear the laughter in his voice. “I told you, my parents are receptive to the idea of us. My mother’s excited! The only thing she’s worried about is that I’ve made you up and you’re actually a figment of my imagination. She was convinced I’ll die alone in my flat one day and no one will realise until work rings me for missing too many sessions at court.”

“Stop pretending, asshole. I know you’re laughing at me. Okay,” I take a deep breath, and say into my mobile, “let’s bring Cherry.”

I hang up, and toss my mobile aside. 

Then I pick it up, and swipe to call him again. 

“Let’s not bring her,” I say, when he picks up at the first ring with a loud snigger, the infuriating man, “Wine. I’ll bring wine instead. What kind do they prefer? Red? White? Rose? Vintage? Jeong Yunho! Stop laughing. Focus! Give me something to work with here.” 

\--

“Wait, come back,” I say, reaching out a hand and pulling at his elbow, so we step back into the foyer of the restaurant.

Yunho turns, one brow arched questioningly. 

I shove the bottle of wine into his hands and beckon for him to come closer with the instruction, “cup your hands and don’t crumple the ribbon.”

He does, but his eyebrows go up higher.

They come down in comprehension when I flick my fingers across his forehead, and pick at a strand of misbehaving black hair, to smooth it back into place with its brethren.

“You were going to walk in and greet your parents with hair in your face,” I roll my eyes at him. “Really? I would say where are your manners, but I’m sure your mother is lovely.”

“Goodness,” a voice says from behind him in delight. “Can I trade you for him, Yunho-yah?”

“You can’t, Mum, I’ve already called dibs,” Yunho turns, and says casually while I try not to die on the spot. 

There’s a lady standing behind him, just metres away from us. 

I can’t even pray that she’s just a passing stranger, because he’s already hailed her. 

Oh, they’re hugging now. 

He looks like her; Yunho does.

Any hope I have of making a good first impression dies a swift death, given how the first thing my -Boyfriend? Partner? Special Friend? I don’t know, we haven’t quite articulated it- _Yunho_ ’s mother sees, is apparently me loudly nagging at her son like some common fishwife.

Fish-husband? Fish-partner. Fish-friend. Fish-person.

I clear my throat to banish the frankly nonsensical direction my inner musings were going, and bow in greeting, as straight-backed as I can. 

\--

The dinner with Yunho’s parents is a bit of an anti-climax. 

His parents are extremely cordial, and nice, and we spend the entire dinner and then some conversing about issues ranging from the state of the economy and how the current political party heading the government is making a right muck of things. Like proper, civilised adults.

We end up debating on justice reform, unsurprising given how I also learn from this dinner that his father is a retired district judge for Jeollado.

No one gets hit during any of the courses, and no one gets mistaken for any celebrities of any sort, although his mother does pat my hand when I blurt out that I have a daughter, and smiles and smiles when I show them Cherry’s pictures.

\--

Years later, I nudge Yunho in the shin, hard. “Were you exaggerating when you said your father wasn’t too keen on the idea of us, in the beginning?”

His memory with regard to such things is still sharp as a steel blade. “I never said that. I only said that he was getting used to the idea.” 

“They were nice to me,” I murmur, smiling despite myself. Then I glare at him. “Your poor father. He should have sued you for slander. You made me so nervous with that, thinking he’d be an ogre.”

“Changminnie,” Yunho points out, patient, “the first time my mother saw you in person, you were grooming me like I was a recalcitrant dog for their sake, and calling her lovely. And you didn’t even have any idea that she was within earshot.”

“Oh,” I say. “When you put it that way.”

“She was a goner,” he informs me sagely. “My father never stood a chance. If he had dared to breathe a word against you during dinner, either in your hearing or even when you excused yourself to the loo… Well, he wouldn’t have. My father is many things, but he’s not a stupid man.”

“Oh,” I say again, pleased.

\--

My family is a bit of a no-brainer, in comparison. My youngest sister was there even before Yunho and I were, well, Yunho-and-I. 

She and my middle sister are basically joined at the hip, even when they’re in the middle of one of their rows. Strange girls. 

There’s no need to break anything to them, unless it’s a couple of water glasses over their heads for being obnoxious.

Like now: 

“So how is he?” My middle sister says, sipping at her shot of soju. “Youknow. That man.”

“Oh, props for pun,” my youngest sister hums consideringly before I can even open my mouth. “Do you mean Cherry’s boyfriend?”

“Oh, is he _Cherry’s_ boyfriend, now?” My middle sister makes a moue of faux-surprise. “I know he’s dating a member of our family, but I didn’t think it was the tot.”

They high-five each other. 

“Hilarious,” I say with dead eyes. “The two of you should start your own YouTube channel. Standup comedy will be a good alternative career plan for you both.”

They preen, until I throw a bottle cap in their direction. “Focus! How should I let the parents know?”

I stiffen, as they exchange looks. “What. What did you do. What.”

“Well,” my middle sister says soothingly, “I don’t know how else to put this, but I think they already know.”

“What!” I squawk. “What.”

“Yes,” my youngest sibling is remorseless, “remember that day when you FaceTimed me and Cherry and Yunho were having their Paw Patrol marathon playdate? When Yunho was crawling around on the floor as Rice Cake’s trusty pet pony.”

“It was our date, shit, Rice Cake woke up past her bedtime, and we had to entertain her somehow to make her sleepy,” I pause, and narrow my eyes at her. “Why do I sense that is not quite your punchline.”

“So I had you on speaker mode, and I was in the living room,” she says. “Where our parents were also at. They were watching telly since it was only nine at night.”

I’m silent for too long. The youngest piece of shit that I am related to says with some surprise, “damn. He didn’t lose his temper. I was so sure he would!”

“Ha! You're on dish-washing duty for the next month,” says the middle piece of shit, gleeful. The exchange of favours occurs right beneath my nose.

“I’m not going to lose my temper,” I say, even, after taking a deep breath. “Not when you just told me that the cat’s out of the bag and I don’t even need to make Yunho run the gauntlet.”

“What do you mean,” the two pieces of shit chorus, and look at each other.

“Of course there’s a need to run the gauntlet,” the youngest shit reminds. “The gauntlet is your daughter.”

“Right. Fuck,” I say with feeling. 

\--

Of all the scenarios I’ve come up with about the consequences of explaining how Papa and Uncle Youknow are friends, or rather, Friends with a capital ‘F’ now, what actually happens is something that has never crossed my mind.

I had thought of her bouncing off of the walls in excitement, or receiving the news with mute surprise, or even her throwing a tantrum over us not letting her know sooner.

What I haven’t envisioned is her looking first at me, then at Yunho, and then back at me.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Rice Cake?” I ask.

We’re both sat with her in our living room. Yunho’s here to visit, and he’s squatted back on his haunches as usual, so he can converse with Cherry eye-to-eye.

Sometimes when I look at the two of them like that, dark head bent to dark head, there’s a curl of something soft and aching, smarting from my throat and back up into my nose.

He’s bent to her even now, unsmiling and serious for once. The dense blue denim of his jeans pull tight across his thighs, and hips. 

I cough, and pull my eyes forcibly up to his face, and hers.

Cherry looks at him, and back at me again.

“Papa is not friends with Uncle Youknow anymore?” Her little voice wavers. Her bottom lip is starting to stick out.

I look at Yunho. A little help will be nice. 

“Uncle is still friends with your Papa, Cherry,” he tries, with one hand coming up to pat her on the head. “We’re just very good friends. Very, very good friends. So Cherry will see Uncle a little more often. Is that okay?”

“Cherry likes Uncle,” she agrees, and then she shakes her head. Her eyes are getting wet. “But Papa says Uncle Youknow isn’t his friend anymore.”

She turns those round big eyes at him, and he looks like he’s the one who wants to cry instead.

This man. He’s hopeless.

I cough again, and take over. 

“Rice Cake, baby,” I say, brisk. “You know how Minwoo in your class has two mummies? And Hyejin, she’s got two daddies?”

“Yes,” her eyes are round and unblinking. “They’re married. Kwon-seonsaeng-nim says it means they love each other very much, and Minwoo’s Big Mummy and Small Mummy, they go home together, and they sleep in the same room. Hyejin’s daddies, too. She calls them Da and Dada.”

“Right,” I balk a little at the level of detail her kindergarten teacher has offered, but needs must. At least the concept isn’t foreign to her. “That’s how Papa and Uncle are, too." Sort of. "That’s why Papa says Uncle isn’t Papa’s friend anymore.”

She tries to digest that, and asks with a small voice, “so Papa loves Uncle Youknow?”

“Yes,” I agree. 

Yunho jolts a little at that. Fair. I haven’t actually said that to him directly, yet. 

“But,” her eyes are turning wet. “But.”

“It’s okay if Cherry is uncomfortable,” Yunho is actually looking the most scared I’ve ever seen him. He’s hastening to reassure her and he’s babbling, it’s almost funny, “Cherry’s Papa still loves her the most! Uncle Youknow will never do something to make Cherry sad-”

We’re both shocked, when she flings herself into his lap and goes from damp eyes to outright wailing in three seconds flat, “but Cherry is going to marry Uncle Youknow when I grow big! Papa can’t marry you! Uncle Youknow is Cherry’s boyfriend!”

\--

What follows is an unprecedented week of a cold war between my child and I. 

She even goes so far as to request a sleepover at her grandparents’, cold and polite in a sulky little voice. 

The only reason why I allow it is because I’m too shocked to say no. And she said 'please' and 'thank you' of her own volition. Twice.

“You have to understand,” my father tells me over a call the next day. From the sound of it, he’s very clearly enjoying this, “she feels betrayed.”

“Betrayed!” I say. “She! Dares to feel betrayed!”

“Who was the one who kept calling that boy of yours her boyfriend?” He continues, merciless. “And don’t think I haven’t heard things from your sisters. Who was the one who kept bringing Cherry out to meet him, and calling it her playdates?”

“Playdates,” I choke. “I was joking!” 

“I’ve had more than thirty years to get used to your sense of humour. Half the time I still don’t know when and if you are joking,” says the man who raised me and once cracked a ‘hi hungry, I’m dad’ joke memorably when I came home absolutely starving from school and he was the only parent at home. I was in middle school at that point in time, and too hungry to appreciate dad jokes. “No wonder the poor child is confused.”

“Poor child!” I snort, disbelieving. “Spoilt, more like!”

“And who’s the one who did the spoiling?” Says the same man who also commissioned a doll house taller than my child was, on her second birthday. “You made your own bed!” 

I don’t even know where to begin my protestations, and stay mutinously silent instead.

“Chin up, lad,” my father advises jovially, “years down the road we’ll all look back on this and laugh, and lord it over her forever. You can’t deny that she’s got backbone. Her Papa stole her boyfriend out from under her nose. Her reaction's not unwarranted.”

“Laugh!” I say. “Backbone! I! Steal!”

“Stop echoing my words like a parrot,” he cackles, “and stop throwing a tantrum. _You_ are actually old enough to know better.”

He pauses when I say nothing and goes on, voice softening a smidge, “anyway! You don’t have long to wait. She kept fussing on how we read her bedtime stories last night. Something about how no one does the voices right, like Papa can. After that she cried herself to sleep, because she couldn’t get her fill of Papa bedtime hugs."

I inhale noisily, at that.

"Almost there. I’ll give her another day, tops," my father offers, gentle.

I scrub a hand over my face. “Well, she only has so much leeway. I’ll bring her back home tomorrow night even if she’s still sulking. Thank you, Father.”

“There’s no need to say things like that,” the old man tells me, his voice suddenly gruff. “I’m your father, lad. No matter how old you are. Maybe bring that boy of yours over for dinner after we get Cherry sorted out. Your mother wants to meet him properly.”

\--

“Are you still angry with me,” I ask Cherry bluntly, when we’re back home after her impromptu staycation -for want of a better word- at her grandparents’. 

It’s just the two of us.

She is not looking at me. 

Cherry’s scuffing the toe of her sock on the floor, woebegone. She’s already put her shoes back into the shoe rack quietly, without my needing to nag for once.

“Rice Cake?” I put down her backpack, and crouch down in front of her. “Are you still angry with Papa?”

“Papa loves Cherry best,” she says, still staring down, still scuffing. It’s not a question. 

I stifle a laugh despite myself. “Yes. Yes, I do. Stop that, you’ll wear a hole in your sock.”

“But Papa will give Uncle Youknow to Cherry so Cherry has another daddy,” she persists. “Because Papa loves Uncle Youknow?”

My hands slow about her feet, and continue to pull her socks off of them. “We can’t give people to other people, Rice Cake. People aren’t things. But yes. I love your Uncle Youknow. He makes me laugh.”

It’s easier to say it when it’s not to his face.

“Okay,” she continues, undaunted. She finally deigns to look at me, then. “But Uncle Youknow will be Cherry’s other daddy? Because he makes Papa laugh.”

We stare at each other. I don’t quite know where she’s going with this, but she’s not crying nor kicking nor screaming. At least it’s progress.

“If you want,” I say, cautious. I sit down, tucking my legs under me. “Uncle Youknow is fine to be just your uncle, too. It’s really up to you.”

She thinks it over a little more, and then visibly comes to a decision.

“Okay,” she says again, and steps nearer to put her arms around me. “As long as Papa loves me best. I can share Papa with Uncle Youknow, and Uncle Youknow with Papa. Because it’s Papa. I missed you. Let’s not fight. I love you.”

I curve a hand around my little girl’s shoulders, and press my nose against her hair, inhaling.

She smells sweet and fresh, of baby powder and the lilac of her shampoo. 

“That’s nice,” I say, voice thick. I shake my head a little, to blink away the blurriness clouding my vision.

It's tough to speak evenly through a throat constricted with emotion, but I manage. “Thank you, Rice Cake. Love you too.”

  
  


\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rice Cake gives you all appropriate socially distanced air hugs! Keep safe and healthy this summer. Comments are as always, love x


	8. おまけ: 아빠! 어디가?

Cherry comes home one day from school, a form half-crumpled in her hands. She starts towards me after she’s got her shoes off. 

“Wait, Cherry Bomb. Go wash your hands,” Yunho follows behind her, her school bag hanging from his shoulder. He smiles at me in greeting.

Selfishly, I take a moment to appreciate the aesthetic, because those shoulders are no joke, even wrapped under a layer of rumpled cotton and unbuttoned suit jacket. I deserve a little pick-me-up after a very trying afternoon editing my column over and over again because my editor doesn’t know what he wants. 

Then I force myself to turn back to the chopping board, because dinner isn’t going to make itself.

With clean hands, my child comes over to hug me hello. My own hands are sticky with meat and offal, so she goes back to Yunho instead to putter about the living room. Probably starting on homework.

They are rather peaceful, twin dark heads bent over that piece of paper, and I can hear him murmuring to her. I don’t think too much of it. 

\--

I don’t think much of it, until she announces during dinner through a mouthful of samgyetang, “can Uncle come to school with me tomorrow?”

“Close your mouth and chew. We don’t talk while we’re eating,” I say automatically, and pause. “You want Uncle to go to school with you tomorrow? Why?”

Yunho opens his mouth. He looks guarded, suddenly. “Cherry-”

“It’s Bring Your Father to School day,” She heads him off, and tells me, matter-of-fact. “I already asked Uncle. He can come to school with me. He's staying over tonight anyway.”

Too many things come to my mind then. 

Bring Your Father To School is something I’d heard about. The teachers did mention, earlier in the year, at the last parent-teacher conference, that Cherry’s grade does have some activities with active parental involvement as such, and they’ll give heads-up when that happens. Bring Your Father to School. Half a day isn’t a heads-up. It’s extremely short notice. I have an interview tomorrow morning with an entrepreneur GQ’s keen to secure the Cover Feature for next month’s issue, and given how we need to do an editorial photoshoot too, it’ll probably take the whole day. I can’t push it. My editor will have a fit. I’ve told Cherry about this since last week. Yunho’s picking her after classes, on my behalf, because of that. We’ve got it worked out. But it’s Bring Your Father To School. Isn’t that supposed to be me? Why did she just announce that it’ll be him. Just like that? But my daughter is basically saying the man I love is her father. She also sees him as her father. There’s something soft and aching in me, at that. I’ve always been terrified that she hasn’t accepted Yunho, not truly and not fully, because of that truly spectacular fit she threw, when we first told her. Because she still insists on calling him ‘Uncle’, even though it’s been more than three years, and she’s got friends at school with two mothers, or two fathers. We’ve never asked her if she wants to change the appellation, or even brought up the subject to her. How do you talk about things like this? I’ve always been scared that one day I’ll have to choose between the two of them, and Cherry will win. Always, because it’s her. Bring Your Father To School. I should be happy that it hasn’t occurred to her to _not_ consider Yunho, and I _am_ happy. And yet. It stings a little. Just a little.

I can’t say any of these. They won’t come out, anyway. 

They’re just a ball of… things, lodged at the back of my throat. 

I stand up from the dining table, and put my chopsticks to the left of my bowl, and my spoon to the right of it. 

“Changmin,” Yunho starts. 

"Well. I'm full," I murmur. I don't look at my daughter. I can’t.

I leave the dining room, and go to my study. I close my door quietly. 

\--

He leaves me alone for twenty minutes, long enough to get her to finish eating.

I listen from my study, head in my hands, at the tell-tale sounds of him instructing her to help him wipe the dishes while he washes, and then of him hurrying her off to take her shower. Familiar sounds. 

Something unfurls in my chest at that. At the noises the two of them make, just going about Cherry's night time routine. 

I feel a little like a child who’s thrown a tantrum, by sending himself to bed without supper.

There’s a knock on my door. 

“Come in,” I say, and balk a little at how hoarse I sound.

I clear my throat. Yunho comes in, then. 

He’s still in his work shirt and trousers, and he's hesitant in a way he rarely is. 

“She’s showering,” he shares. “She’s only got a piece of homework today, so she’ll do that and head to bed.”

He's standing a little ways away from my desk. His voice is too carefully cheery and his hands are opening and closing into fists by his sides.

“I know,” I say. “She told me just now, when she came home. About the homework.” And not about the other thing, until dinner.

We’re both silent for a little while. Then he takes a deep breath.

“I apologise if you’re offended,” he says, when I ask at the same time, “so do you have to take urgent leave for tomorrow? Will your department allow it?”

He pauses. I’ve clearly surprised him. “What…”

I wave a hand at him. "Did you think I was angry?"

"Yes," Yunho offers, after a beat. "I'm not her father."

"I'm not angry," I say, and more honestly: "I was jealous."

He comes around the side of my desk now, visibly distressed. "Changmin."

"I'm not sure which one of you I'm more jealous of," I joke. Maybe I'm not joking. Not quite.

"I won't go tomorrow," Yunho starts, and takes my hand in his, just as I decide, "I'll pick you both up after school. My interview should be done by four."

We look at each other. 

"You can't not go," I tell him. "Who will she bring to school then? The celebrity tomorrow is a bit of a diva. Apparently our business development reps grovelled for nearly half a year with their people for this feature. If I don’t go, Cherry will be angry with _me_. For not doing my job properly."

He struggles a little. His hand is warm and tight around mine, and he goes, "I can call her mother for her. Or you can. Whichever."

"She's in China this week," I respond after thinking about it, and blink up at him. "Last I checked, my ex-wife is not Rice Cake's _father_. Have I mentioned again lately how creepy it is that my ex and you are friends?"

"Why? She's Cherry's biological parent and more than worthy. Plus she’s a lovely woman," he tangles our fingers together. "We have a lot of common topics. The conversation just runs itself."

"That," I point out, reasonably enough, I think. I don't want to touch the other part of the conversation, not when Cherry's still awake and in the flat. We'll need privacy and most importantly, time, to have that discussion. Raking up insecurities is never fun. "You two, just yakking on, when you do meet. _That_ is the creepy part."

"You're really fine with me going?" Not taking the bait, he dithers, hovering. 

I rarely see him like this, if ever. 

One of the things that attracted me to Yunho in the first place is how no-nonsense and brisk he can be, and how easily he makes choices.

I look at him now, and at his anxious eyes. At how his fingers are too tight around mine and how his whole body is tense. Like he’s bracing himself for a blow.

It's me, I realise. This man is making a conscious choice to flay himself open to hurt, because of me. He's allowing me that power. To hurt him.

Because he loves me. Because he loves us.

"I won't lie and say I'm not possessive enough of my kid that I wish I was the one who'll be there," I tell him, to another tightening of his fingers. 

I tug on them, and pull him closer, until he is a warm line pressed against my shoulder, and my side. “But then I’m also very, very, very happy that she naturally thought to bring you when she knew I couldn’t make it. That it wasn’t even in her to consider _not_ to. And also that you would agree without thought. I know I’m not making much sense. I don’t know how else to say this.”

He doesn’t say anything for a bit, and leans into me heavily.

I feel him drop a kiss at the top of my head.

“You know how I feel about her,” Yunho murmurs into my hair, some time later. “About you. About you both.”

“You spoil her,” I counter, leaning my cheek against his clothed stomach. I pause. “And you find me tolerable enough, I suppose.”

He snorts at that, and dissolves into chuckles. I can feel the way his chest is shaking with laughter, and how his voice is a low rumble, “I suppose _that_ ’s one way of putting it, yes.”

\--

I emerge from my study some time after that, blinking and trying in vain to straighten my mussed hair. 

Yunho was reluctant to let me go, but I have to say good night to my child, and she probably already knows there’s something wrong with her Papa tonight. I wasn’t exactly subtle. 

Taking a deep breath, I knock on her door. It’s been left slightly ajar. A mute invitation. “Rice Cake? Can I come in?”

“Yes,” she says, and I go in. Her homework is a neat stack on her desk, together with her school bag.

She’s already switched off her lights. Her little night light is on, and breaking her record of sleeping these past weeks the big girl way. With all lights off.

Guilt wells up in me, and I sit at the edge of her bed. “Do you want your night light off, Cherry?”

Cherry stares at me from where she’s already tucked herself in bed, dark eyes gleaming in the dim light. “Papa, are you angry that I am bringing Uncle to school tomorrow because he’s not my daddy yet?”

The question is so direct, and so out of the left field that I choke on my spit.

She clambers out of bed at that, and whacks me magnanimously and very hard on my back. 

I draw in breath with much difficulty after hacking half a lung. With watering eyes, my coughs are tapering off when I register the nuance of her ask - _yet?_ \- and I choke again.

“Do you need a glass of water?” She is solicitous, as she again attempts to murder her parent via repeated brute force administered to the back.

“I’m,” I gasp. “Fine.” 

I inhale slowly, and breathe out in an exhale. I’m fine.

“Well?” My child is dogged. She pokes a hand at my elbow, and crosses her arms in front of her. 

“Where,” I swallow, “where did you get the idea? Of Uncle being your-”

She stares at me unblinkingly. 

I scratch at my nape, and mumble, “-daddy.”

“You kiss each other a lot,” she is dispassionate and factual, like she is talking about breakfast, or the colour of the sky, or tying her shoelaces. “Hyejin's daddies kiss less, when I visit her. Uncle comes over for sleepovers years and years and longer than Youngho’s mummy and daddy have been his mummy and daddy. Grandfather and Grandmother see Uncle with us every week. Jaehyun says his mama sees his papa’s parents every week too, even though she’s not his mama from when he was a baby.”

Out of the mouth of babes. 

I don’t even know what to do with the information bomb she’s just dumped on me. I fumble, “do you imps just gossip about your parents all day at school? Is that what classes are about, these days?”

I can see Cherry’s nose wrinkling even in the dim of her bedroom. “Gossip is grown up and boring.” 

Maybe it’s time to change the subject. I pat her hand, “Papa’s not angry.”

“Papa was angry,” she counters. I wish she’ll be as tenacious when doing her homework. “You didn’t even finish your dinner. Uncle had to pack your food into the fridge. He was worried.”

Because we’ll be going around in circles, and there’ll be no sleep to be had if I continue obfuscating, I go for the opposite. 

Somehow it’s turned into Honesty Hour for me. “Papa was jealous. Papa thought you didn’t love me anymore.”

She doesn't react. She's either staring very hard at my tee, or she's fallen asleep with her eyes open. Have I broken my child at long last?

I pat her hand again, with some caution.

She twitches a little, and looks at me. She's blinking very rapidly.

“But I love you best, Papa.” My poor child is confused. I don’t blame her.

There’s a look of befuddlement on her face not unlike Yunho’s, when I harassed him into ignoring my neuroses -which have mostly sunk back into dormancy after rearing their head in such a dramatic fit- and agreeing to go for tomorrow. “That’s why we are sharing Uncle Youknow. Because I love Papa best. And Papa loves me best.”

Right. How could I have forgotten my daughter’s display of filial love, when she clearly hasn’t.

“Right,” I tell her gravely. “Rice Cake loves me best.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she says, and presses a kiss against my cheek. “You can have Uncle Youknow as my other daddy.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. Privately, I’m not too keen on personally reliving the actual act of marriage, given how I’ve made a proper muck of things with my previous attempt. 

Yunho and I have certainly never talked about it explicitly, although he knows well enough my opinions on the concept of matrimony in general. 

But I have no inclination to explain the concept of ‘living in sin’ to my child -to _any_ child- and since she was the one who brought it up:

“Will you like that?” I ask her.

“I’ll like to marry Uncle when I’m grown,” I’m glad my spawn has decided to follow in her old man’s footsteps. But talk about being brutally candid. “But I won’t. Uncle can only marry one person, and Papa will be sad then. So it’s okay. Papa can give me Uncle as my other daddy instead. I’ll like that, too.”

This girl. Honestly!

\--

After that very educational heart-to-heart and leaving Cherry to sleep without her night light on after all, I wander back to my bedroom in a daze.

Yunho’s already washed up. He’s sitting up in bed in a faded green tee, and comfortable looking pajama trousers.

The sides of his jaw still look a little tender even from such a distance. It’s beard burn from me, and from our earlier activities in the study.

He’s got too many papers strewn over his side of the bed and some glossy photographs that he immediately flips over at my entrance, to my relief. There’s a reason why I went into columns and feature-writing, and not investigative journalism.

My stomach roils a little, even as I try my damnedest not to picture the nature of the images he’s been poring over.

He looks at me from over the rims of his reading spectacles. “Have you two made up? My leave for tomorrow has been approved.”

I meander to him, and swing myself onto the bed. He moves two legal pads and a few photographs out of the way, in time for me to sit heavily on his calves.

“I think,” the lingering shock prompts me to say in a faint voice, “my daughter just gave me her approval."

"For? You not going tomorrow?" He murmurs, but he's distracted and scanning through whatever he's written on one of the notepads. 

"For me to marry you," I tell him, blank.

Yunho stills completely.

The photographs fall from his slackened grip, to float back down on the bed, face-up.

I catch a glimpse of some bits that look distressingly like cuts of beef, and wince. I know that’s not beef. “I would rather not-”

“Sorry!” He springs into action then, and gathers them back up, and shuffles the piles of his notes together. “Sorry. Can’t show them to you, anyway. Classified information. We’re still working towards a charge.”

I sneak a glance at him.

Yunho’s blushing. There’s very faint red dusting the top of his cheeks. 

His movements are jerky, but fast. His case notes are now two haphazard stacks listing sideways on his lap. His gaze is very firmly fixed on them. 

I put a hand on his knee. His blush intensifies.Together with his pink-looking jaw, it should have made a comical sight.

There’s nothing comical about this. 

Yunho’s still not looking at me, as he says very, very, very softly, “I know you don’t believe in marriage. You say it often enough.”

“I wasn’t very good at it,” I reach over, and push his hair out of and off his forehead. The ends of it are still damp from the shower he must have taken, when I was with Cherry. “Even with a brilliant partner. And I didn’t really like the version of me that was around, during it.”

I stroke the pad of my finger at the baby-fine hairs lining his temples. “I like the version of me now. With you.”

He catches my hand, and brings it to his lips. “I like this version of me when I’m with you, too.”

The curves of his lashes are inky crescents, against his pale cheeks.

I lift my other hand, and drift the pads of my fingers against the prickle of them.

This silence feels sacred, and sacrosanct.

He goes, softer yet, “still feels nice to have Cherry’s approval, though.”

“Yes,” I agree. My fingers are resting in the wells beneath his closed eyes.

His lashes quiver, and I feel the shift of his muscles beneath my fingers, as he smiles.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 아빠! 어디가?: lit. "Dad! Where are you going?"  
> also the name of a South Korean father-and-children reality TV show, translated as "Dad, Where Are We Going?"
> 
> Both meanings apply as the chapter's title. Comments are love. x


	9. おまけ: it takes a village

A day in my life typically goes like this.

\--

06:45 am. The alarm rings. Not that I know it’s fifteen to seven, nor that shrill beeping is the alarm, because the world is lovely and dark and cosy and I just want to sleep.

There’s a warm weight at my side.

I curl into it with a muffled moan. Sleep is my favourite thing right now but that noise just won’t stop.

The weight at my side shifts. The beeping stops. 

I press my face against the warmth, and find myself falling back to sleep.

There’s a scraping and my bedroom door opens, someone with a piping voice speaks. It’s my child. I’ll know her voice anywhere. “It’s morning, Papa and-”

I make an inarticulate sound as the warmth that I’ve buried my face into quakes. Then it has the temerity to up and leave me. “I’m up, Cherry Bomb. Let Papa sleep for a bit longer.”

The duvet is being tucked around me, and low against my ear, “sleep for a little more. Cherry’s going to take her shower. I’ll put the rice in the cooker and get the coffee going.”

I mumble something unintelligible, and sink back into sleep.

\--

07:15am. The alarm rings again. It’s a time that’s hardwired into muscle and brain.

My brain might not be working yet, but I’m already sitting up, and pressing the heels of both my hands hard against my eyes. 

Groaning, I swing my feet down onto the chilled hardwood of the floor. That wakes me up a little; enough that I can get moving.

I shamble into the kitchen. 

The coffee machine is filled and ready with black, black goodness. Three cups of it drag me into semi-wakefulness. 

I scratch at my chest as I down them, and frown at the other mug sitting at the counter. There’s still two mouthfuls worth of coffee sitting in it, and it’s surrounded by a brown stain of dried coffee. 

The owner of that mug is squatted in front of the telly, eyes intent on the morning news, but really, it’s simple to leave the mug in the sink if it needs washing. If it doesn’t, then it could have been brought to the living room then, together with a coaster. Why is it just sitting there, again? 

I turn, opening my mouth. 

“Oh, no!” There’s a shout from the second bathroom. It’s Cherry. “I forgot my towel-”

“I’ve got it,” the owner of the mug calls back, and takes his eyes off of the telly. 

My hair is ruffled as he passes by me with a, “put a tee on, Changminnie, it’s summer, but really!”

“You put a tee on,” I say nonsensically, still irritated over the coffee stain, and I feel my eyebrows draw together when he plucks smugly at the faded black singlet he’s got on.

“I’ve got the rice going on in the cooker,” he reminds, and I spin around to the kitchen with a muttered curse, as he heads into my daughter’s bedroom to get the forgotten towel. 

\--

07:45 am. Breakfast is done by the time they’re both back in the kitchen, and yes, I’ve got a blue t-shirt on now, over my pajama trousers. 

It’s simple fare today as always. Just rice and egg rolls and a quick bean sprout soup, paired with chilled sesame spinach my mother sent over earlier in the week.

They’re both nearly dressed for the day, and chattering at me. Cherry’s uniform is almost textbook perfect, except the band of her skirt is twisted. 

I raise an eyebrow at it. Cherry looks down at her skirt band, and up at me. “I’ll do it later-”

He’s already reaching over, and untwisting it for her, before nudging her back towards her chair. 

I roll my eyes. At this rate, her limbs will rot off from having people at her beck and call to perform all sorts of menial tasks for her. 

“-early morning class,” Cherry is saying now. “We need to be downstairs for the school bus in fifteen minutes, Papa, Minwoo’s saved a seat for me-”

“-needed at court today. The session ends at three but I’ll probably be home later since the subway is a mess-”

“Don’t talk when you’re eating if you only have fifteen minutes,” I tell my spawn, and turn to the other, waspish, “why are you not taking the car if you’re needed at court?”’

“You have that interview at lunch today,” is the garbled response around slurps of the soup.

“ _I_ can take the subway,” I say, putting aside my own empty bowl, and frown at the unknotted ends of his tie. “Isn’t it better for you to drive from your office to court?”

“You’ll be at Apgujeong, right?” He knots his tie one-handed, when he notices my gaze. The Windsor knot is lopsided and fat and _ugly_. It’s an offence to my sensibilities. “It’s Friday. The area will be crowded.”

“All the more I should take the subway and not the car,” I say, and gives in, reaching over to straighten the knot. I pat at the neatened knot, pleased. “I’ll be stuck in a traffic deadlock for hours if I drive. Take the damned car.”

I’m being pointed at, and answered by a loud and dramatic and fake gasp. 

Right. Shit. I forgot.

“One thousand won for the swear jar, please,” Cherry butts in to say, a hand outstretched. “Why are you swearing at Daddy so early in the morning?”

The appellation is new enough that Yunho still twitches a little at being called that. The grin that spreads across his face puts the ample sunshine outside the windows to shame.

We don’t even know how and why she started it. She just did, one day. It was impetus for Yunho to finally move in with us properly a month after.

“I’ll put it on credit,” I say, and bats at my spawn’s wiggling fingers.

She’s undeterred, until Yunho reaches into his pocket for his wallet, since he’s already dressed. “I’ll pay for Papa today. It’s my fault, anyway.” 

“You can’t keep doing that, you’re spoiling him,” my horrid spawn is telling him crossly, but she takes the bill and scarpers off towards the jar by the sideboard. 

I’m incredulous. “ _He_ ’s spoiling _me_? Who’s the one who made him do a Disney Princess marathon with her last week?”

Cherry’s coming back to her seat. At that, she wrenches her face to the side, and doesn’t answer me.

Yunho tells me over the top of her head, with laughing eyes, “I’ll take the car.”

\--

08:00am. The habitual goodbyes for the day are being said in front of me.

I put a hand over my eyes at the surfeit of emotion. The entire display is worthy of television primetime drama. 

“Bye,” Cherry sniffs. She’s got her arms tight around a waist that’s wrapped up in a tailored black suit. “Bye, I’ll miss you, bye-”

“You’ll see him for dinner,” I cut in, and am confronted by a pair of wounded gazes. 

I balk. “What? Don’t look at me like that, you’ll see _her_ for dinner, too. We see each other for dinner almost everyday! And aren’t we late, Rice Cake? It’s eight o’clock.”

“Oh!” Cherry shrieks, melancholy forgotten. “The bus! Papa! I’m late!” 

She clatters off for the lift, despite the fact that we’re all heading the same way. Just to different floors. Us to the ground floor, and Yunho to the basement, where the car park is.

“’Bye,” comes a soft murmur next to my ear, and then I’m being kissed. Quite thoroughly. “I’ll miss you most of all. Don’t tell Cherry that.”

“Nonsense,” I say, when I find my voice again. My cheeks feel warm. “Go on. Get. The two of you are the worst. Why do you even do this everyday.”

“Because your face is fun to look at when we do what we do,” Yunho tells me, and laughs and laughs while I grab him by the waist and drag him to the lifts, too.

Cherry’s dancing from foot to foot, impatient. “I’m late! I’m late!”

“Should have remembered that when you were crying at him earlier,” is my unsympathetic rebuke. 

The lift to the basements comes first. I slip my arm from around his waist reluctantly. He waves goodbye to us, and Cherry shouts at the closing doors, “’bye, Daddy!”

The doors close on his beaming face and a, “bye yourself, Cherry Bomb.”

“Inside voice, Rice Cake.” I tell my child. She sticks her tongue out at me.

\--

11:00am. I’m back at home and hard at work on editing a draft after seeing Cherry off hours earlier, when my mobile rings. It’s my ex-wife. 

“Do you think it’s crazy, a pony?” is what she greets me with. It's a common enough occurrence for her to ring me with half the conversation already over on her end.

Things have been settled long enough between us, that I can joke, “I know this was your frequent complaint when we were married. But I’m still not a mind reader, so you’re going to have to explain.”

“For Cherry,” she’s impatient. “Focus, man. A pony!”

I pull the phone away from my ear, and shake it. Then I bring it back up, “beg pardon?”

“A little pony for my daughter,” she says, slow and deliberate. “Her birthday is in a month.”

“Wait. Are you referring to the animation series,” I ask, confused, “and if you are, it’s called My Little Pony, and her favourite is Fluttershy. Or are you talking about a real live miniature horse?”

“The latter,” she replies, and pauses. “Fluttershy? I thought her favourite is Applejack!”

“You’re nuts,” I tell her gravely. “You’re not buying my daughter a small horse for her birthday. Where are we going to park it?”

“I’m not buying your daughter a small horse for her birthday,” she informs me. I breathe a sigh of relief, only to hear, “I’m buying _my_ daughter a pony for her birthday. Yunho thinks it’s a fine idea. Don’t be crazy. There are stables for this sort of thing. You can’t leave it in a car park! What’s it going to eat? Cars?”

“Why am I the crazy one in this conversation,” I sputter.

“Let’s not argue about this,” she’s quick to head me off. “Now what’s this about Fluttershy? Two weeks ago her favourite was Applejack! She liked that blonde mane!”

“Two weeks is a very long time in a nine year old’s book,” I reason. “She said Fluttershy's pink hair is cute.”

\--

12:50pm. After that very fascinating conversation about ponies, both real and fictional with my ex-wife over my mobile, I’m dressed and in Apgujeong. 

It's time for my one o’clock appointment with my interviewee.

“Ponies,” I’m still muttering to myself in disbelief. 

I barely remember to smile, when the actress I’m interviewing arrives, together with her two managers and three personal assistants and her extended entourage consisting of various personnel, and her dog. 

We shake hands. 

“I’m sorry, but dogs aren’t allowed on our premises.” The barista manning the cafe by herself already looks like she wants to cry, and we haven’t even begun yet. 

The actress looks like she wants to murder someone. “This is not- this is my _son_. He’s not a dog.”

I sigh, and turn up the wattage to my professional smile a few notches. “Now, perhaps we can discuss...”

\--

03:02pm. It turns out to be an atypical day when my mobile buzzes too many times at three in the afternoon. 

I ignore it at first, in favour of my subject. People know not to bother me whilst I am working,

The third time it rings, even my interviewee looks askance at me. 

Her feathers are less ruffled now that we’ve switched locations, to a dog-friendly cafe. “Do you want to get that? I don’t mind.”

I nod at her, embarrassed and pull it out from the pocket of my trousers. “Yes, so sorry. Please excuse me.”

There’s a list of missed call notifications and text message previews when I lift my mobile up, but I can barely glance at them, because it rings again.

"Hello," I venture. It's an unknown number, and a voice that I don't recognise in my ear.

I stand in the next second. My chair clatters behind me. "She what!"

\--

03:35pm. I hear the strident tones of my mother before I see any of them. “My granddaughter was only dispensing justice! Given how it’s her personal matter, I don’t really see how-”

“They’re nine years old, ma’am. They shouldn’t be in a position to dispense personal justice, be it on an individual or otherwise-”

Oh, no. 

Straightening my shirt, I quicken my steps, and turn into another hallway. I see my child. My mother is holding her hand. There’s another adult with her, the vice-principal, and another boy who looks vaguely familiar. His left cheek is purpling, and swollen.

“Papa!” Cherry screeches. Her eyes are swollen from crying and she’s got snot all over her face.

I ignore them all in favour of my mother. “Why are you here?” 

“Is this any way you speak to your mother?” She wants to know. “I’m here because my poor Cherry has been- _vilified-_ she’s been maligned-”

I look at the vice-principal. “My apologies for being late. I was at work. May I know the reason for summoning Cherry's grandmother?”

“I, ah,” the poor man looks harassed. He keeps casting glances at my hand. Odd. “Cherry’s form teacher rang you first, Mister Shim, but you were at work. We have another number listed down as Cherry’s next-of-kin, but he tried it and we didn’t get a response too-”

“Daddy’s at court,” Cherry tries, sidling up to me. “And I _told_ them, you were at work. So I had them call Grandmother instead.”

“Yes, Rice Cake, thank you,” I say. I look at the way she’s clutching at my trouser leg, and back up at the vice principal. “What is the problem here?”

He swallows. And darts another look at my left hand. “We’ve, ah, regrettably, an incident of schoolyard violence on our hands here. Cherry was-”

“Minhyeong was being nasty, Papa,” My Rice Cake’s got her bottom lip sticking out, and her voice is taking on a whiny bent, “he laughed and said Jaehyun doesn’t have a mama, but he does! And he says I don’t have a Daddy, but I do. I have you and I have Daddy.”

Her vice-principal’s darting little looks at my left hand -at my ring finger- make sense now. 

My gaze passes over the boy, who shrinks back against the wall, and lands back on my child. 

I’ve always taught her that we should be accountable for all our actions, even the less positive ones, so up goes her little chin, and she announces in ringing tones. “Then Minhyeong made Jaehyun cry. So I kicked him. In the face.” 

\--

3:50pm. Yunho in full court dress is a sight to behold.

Yunho in full court dress storming down the hallway of an elementary school, unsmiling and glaring, though-

Even I have to admit that it’s a pretty terrifying sight. 

I blow out a breath, and force myself to remain where I am standing, and not take a reflexive step back.

Next to me, my mother edges backwards so she’s got her back against the wall. 

Cherry’s clearly of a different mindset.

On the contrary, my snot-faced brat straightens from where she had been slouching against me to crow at the other brat, “my daddy’s here now! He’ll lock you away for saying bad things. He catches bad people. Like you!”

“Cherry,” I say, even. She shrinks a little, but remains defiant.

Yunho comes to a stop in front of us, his black-and red court gown swishing against the linoleum floor. It looks very smart, paired with the black suit he’s got on beneath it. 

His nostrils flare as he looks at me - _they called you right of course they called you-_ and I curl my lip slightly - _I’m trying very hard not to put Rice Cake over my knee_ \- and shrug. 

He bows quickly to my mother in greeting, and does the same towards the vice-principal.

Then the full force of his attention is on Cherry. 

“ _Why did your vice-principal call me._ ” He’s looking less wild about the eyes now that he’s seen that I’m here and she’s in one piece, but he’s still frowning pretty heavily and I can practically hear the italics in his voice. “Are you hurt? What happened. _What did you do_.”

I’m actually pretty impressed. The last time I heard him use this tone of voice was during the evening news, when he was addressing a gaggle of misbehaving reporters about the indictment regarding the latest political scandal, and members of the press were being shouty and unruly. 

“He was saying bad things about you and Papa,” evidently I’ve raised my daughter into becoming a snitch, with how easily she volunteers the information. “He was a- a- a bully! He made my friends cry. And he shouted at me.”

The boy is trying very hard to pretend that he’s invisible. And the vice-principal is still eyeing my left hand. I resist the urge to apologise for the fact that it hasn’t suddenly and spontaneously sprouted a wedding band.

“ _Why_ ,” Yunho’s still looming over her, “did your teacher leave me voicemails shouting about your Papa, and saying that I need to come to school to get you. Right now.”

“Oh,” Cherry tries for a grin at him. It doesn’t quite work. Yunho’s eyebrows are still knotted together, as she goes, “I told him he shouldn’t have. Papa was at work outside and he wouldn’t have looked at his phone. I told him. _I said_ you were at court. _I said_ to call Grandmother, instead. But he insisted on trying to ring you first, after Papa.”

I look at my mother.

Yunho looks at my mother. 

She coughs. “Cherry, let’s not go off-track now.”

There’s a suspicion brewing in me. “Mother, has something like this happen before?”

My mother smiles at me, but I’m not fooled. That’s the same smile Cherry is sporting right now.

“Excuse me,” the vice-principal tries. “Can we please return to the issue at hand. Schoolyard violence is a serious matter. Minhyeong’s parents are on the way, but I believe they’re stuck in a bit of a jam. Perhaps Mister Shim and Mister Jeong will like to wait in the school cafeteria, first?”

I sigh. Cherry’s vice-principal’s going to get it. 

“Schoolyard violence!” If the red lapels on Yunho’s court dress can quiver in indignation, they would. He’s drawing himself up to his full height. 

The boy -the brat opposite my brat- has stopped trying to look invisible and just started looking plain terrified.

I was counting on Yunho working himself up into a righteous lather, but I forget that he gets more than a little odd over Cherry. “Are you hurt, Cherry Bomb? Did this boy- this miscreant hurt you? Did he hit you? What did he say? Tell me everything he did and said _right now!_ ”

Now the boy looks like he might pee in his uniform trousers. The vice-principal looks like he might pee in _his_ trousers, too. 

I bet he wishes he’d sent all of us to the school cafeteria first and waited for the boy’s parents to arrive, but I for one am thankful that there isn't another adult here to incite Yunho any further. 

He’s glaring at the boy now. Joy. And I had hoped he might rip Cherry a good one this time, and I wouldn’t have to play Bad Cop.

Time for Bad Cop Papa to take over.

I rub a hand over my face. “We’ve been over this,” I say tiredly. “The miscreant isn’t this young man. It’s Cherry.”

That cuts Yunho’s blustering short. He looks at the boy, then at Cherry, then at me. “What do you mean? What’s Cherry?”

“The dear gentleman here,” I indicate the vice-principal, “has shared that Cherry kicked this poor child earlier today.”

Yunho looks like he’s thinking very hard, and still not quite understanding what I’m saying.

I add on, “in the face. She kicked him in the face.”

‘With the spinning heel kick you taught her’ is something that I don’t say out loud. 

Yunho is able to read it from my face, nevertheless. 

He gets a little shifty-eyed then, and turns back to Cherry. “Cherry, did you hit someone without reason?”

That’s enough to get my child going. “He was being mean! After he made Jaehyun cry, he shouted in my face! And he called you and Papa pansies, and more nasty bad things, Yerim was next to me and she was so scared _she_ cried, and he wouldn’t stop even though Haechan was trying to make him stop!”

Sometimes I forget what Yunho does for a living. 

Now is not one such time, not when he looks triumphant at being handed a victory by his helpful little witness, and turns to the vice-principal, “can I ask if these are the values that are being taught at your school, sir? You condone homophobia and verbal intimidation to the point of coercion-”

My mother looks very impressed. The vice-principal, less so.

\--

4:40pm. By the time the boy’s parents arrive, bearing hurried apologies about Seoul evening traffic, they’re subjected to their son bowing deeply to my child in apology, dry-eyed and contrite.

I eye Yunho beadily, when we’re in the car. The vice-principal had looked very happy to see us all go. “Verbal intimidation as a charge? How ironic.”

“Hush,” he tells me hurriedly, and goes back to nagging at my spawn, “we need to protect ourselves, Cherry, but maybe don’t kick them in the face next time. Unless we're in physical danger. Resorting to fisticuffs to settle a verbal disagreement is vulgar and we should have faith in the corrective system put in place-”

“Corrective system,” I snort. “Is that court lingo?”

My mother pats gently at the side of my headrest, from the backseat.

Yunho’s still on a roll about how vigilantism should not be a favoured option in any circumstance. Neither should highly lethal heel kicks to the face be a favoured method of dispensing said vigilante justice.

“Maybe we shouldn’t kick anyone at all,” I say loudly. “Either in the face or otherwise. Maybe we should, oh, I don’t know, stop it with the hapkido and the kickboxing lessons, _nine is not a good age to learn how to be a murder machine._ ”

They both ignore me. 

Cherry’s pouting again, since her gamble that Daddy might take up her side of the argument against Papa has failed.

\--

06:45pm. We have dinner with my mother, since it’s too late for her to head home to cook. My father, she tells us, has bummed off to eat out at the pollack shop around the corner from their place with my youngest sister. All’s good on that front.

I order in Chinese delivery, and glare at my spawn when she has the temerity to pipe up about wanting extra dumplings.

“I am this close to sending you to bed without supper,” I murmur.

She snaps her mouth shut so fast that her teeth click together.

\--

08:30pm. After we see my mother off, and after I lecture Cherry long and loud until she’s burst into tears and then some, and after Cherry’s made to do her homework without any television time today, as part of her punishment for beating her classmate up. 

Afterwards, I lean into Yunho. 

He runs a hand across the back of my neck, and knocks his forehead gently into mine.

“Tired?” He wants to know.

I just raise an eyebrow at him, and bite his bottom lip, hard.

“Right, sorry, stupid question,” he says when I let go long enough to let him talk. He slips both arms around my waist. “Beating up other children aside, she’s raised pretty well. She’s standing up for people, even at such a young age.”

My other eyebrow rises to join its mate. My voice is wry. “You’re just happy because she’s smacking 'bad' people around. Like you do at court. Didn’t she tell your father during Chuseok that she wants to grow up to be a prosecutor, too?”

“Well, I wouldn't say I am happy that she beat up another child,” he hedges, darting a look at my face. Then he gives up. “At least she’s not beating people up for the fun of it? Could be a lot worse.”

I press my face into the crook of his neck, as he continues blithely, “she could be kicking people in the face because they refuse to give her their lunch money.”

“I’m actually angry at you,” I say, muffled. “I just really need a hug right now. Remind _me_ to beat _you_ up later for giving her kickboxing lessons. And also for putting that bee in my ex’s bonnet about buying Cherry a pony. Don’t even try to lie. I know it’s you. Was that what the two of you were nattering about, on Children’s Day? Traitor. The hell does my child need a pony for?”

“All right,” he tells me, and tightens his arms about me, until I’m caught up in his embrace. “All right. You can beat me up later. You can even kick me in the face. I promise. I’ll hold still for you.”

“You’d better,” I threaten, and hug him back.

\--


	10. おまけ: C is for Cherry.

My name is Cherry. I’m ten years old this year.

I need to write this composition about my family. It is for English class. I don’t really know what to write about. My family is my family and they are interesting.

Later, I’ll ask Papa to help me edit this. Papa writes for a living, and he says that means he writes and edits and writes and edits, which is a fancy way of saying he has to change what he writes, all the time.

He’ll know what I should write. Papa knows a lot of things. Daddy says Papa is the smartest person he knows. And Daddy has a lot of people who listen to him, and he appears on the news, so Daddy knows what he is saying.

My family is very big and very small at the same time. We learnt this last year in Nam-seonsaengnim’s Civic class, about family and its different types. 

I don’t have a nuclear family. If we use the family units Nam-seonsaengnim has taught us, I have a single-parent family. 

In the past, people have laughed at me about that. I still get angry sometimes, but Papa says “Rice Cake, we have to control our tempers and big girls don’t throw tantrums willy-nilly.”

Daddy buys me candy if I save my tantrums till I am home. We don’t tell Papa about it. 

~~Oops. I think Papa knows about it now, since he is reading this.~~

Sorry, Papa. Daddy only does that at most once a fortnight. We don’t eat too much candy. Daddy says I won’t sleep then, and you’ll kill him. But you teach me that violence is bad, so I think Daddy was joking. Otherwise you'll be a bad person, and Daddy will have to catch you then, and he will be very sad when he does it.

Single-parent family means it’s just my Papa and I. It sounds very small. But that’s not really true. Papa is my Papa and people tell me I have his eyes. Everyone says I look and sound and behave just like him, except I am a girl. Papa’s work is his writing. It’s for a very big magazine that has pretty pictures that he showed it to me a few times. Papa says I can’t read it yet. I have to wait until I grow up a little more. Papa works at home and at his office, and he meets a lot of different people. Some of them are famous people Grandfather and I watch on the telly. Papa likes to cook. He makes all my favourite dishes and Papa’s food is better than when we eat outside. Papa is always the first person to scold me, but he gets sad when he does that. Papa is very, very tall. He’s even taller than Daddy, who is very tall, too. 

We live together, Papa and I and Daddy. They’re my family, even though Daddy wasn’t my Daddy from when I was born. He was Uncle Youknow first, but I’ll talk about that later.

I have Mother from when I was born, and Mother is my mother. Mother is my family, too. Weekends are Mother’s time with me. She calls them our special time. Papa and Daddy don’t join us. It’s just us two.

Mother’s work is very important. I don’t live with Mother, but I see Mother every week, unless Mother has work. Sometimes she brings me along, and she has a lot of people working for her. They like to talk to me, and smile at me, and pat me on the head. It gets a bit hard talking to Mother’s people though, because they’re all very tall, and I have to look up, and up. 

Daddy is the only person who is tall but will make himself shorter, to talk to me. Even when I was smaller, he would squat down so I could look at his face, and talk. But that’s because he’s my Daddy. Daddy doesn’t write like Papa does. He goes to a very special place called ‘court’ and fights bad people with his words, but he says them out loud. Daddy helps people at his work and sometimes he goes on the telly for it. He has a uniform he wears. It’s black and red and looks a little like the clothes in the Harry Potter movies. Sometimes Daddy brings worksheets back from his work. He says they’re his homework, like mine. But he doesn’t allow me to look at them. 

Other than Papa and Daddy and Mother, I have aunts too. There are two of them. They are Papa’s little sisters. I see them when I see two of my grandparents, even though my Big Aunt has just gotten married. It means I see my New Uncle too when I see her. I wore a very pretty dress to their wedding.

At Grandmother’s house, I watch Pororo with my Little Aunt. I don’t really like Pororo, but Little Aunt says she doesn’t have anyone else to watch it with her, so we watch it together every Thursday. Little Aunt can use Pororo’s voice to talk to me. She is funny.

I wrote about it earlier. I have grandparents. I have six of them! Papa says that’s because I’m special.

There is Grandmother and Grandfather, whom I see nearly everyday. Grandmother and Grandfather are Papa’s mother and father. Grandmother likes to pick me up from school, so I can visit with her and Grandfather. Little Aunt lives with them so I see her too when I see Grandmother and Grandfather in the afternoon. Then either Daddy or Papa or both of them come to pick me up from Grandmother’s house, and we go home to have dinner, and I see her again the next day.

Except for Thursdays. On Thursdays, Papa and Daddy and I and Big Aunt and New Uncle and Little Aunt and Grandmother and Grandfather all eat together, in Grandmother’s house. 

Then I have Grandpa and Grandma, who are Mother’s father and mother. I see them less, because they live very, very far away. We have to fly in aeroplanes to see them. Even though my time with them is also Mother’s special time, sometimes Papa and Daddy come along too. Like last Christmas.

Finally there is Big-Papa and Big-Mama. They’re Daddy’s father and mother. I call them that because I ran out of names to call my grandparents, since there are so many of them. Big-Mama can’t cook as well as Grandmother can, but Big-Mama makes me a lot of very pretty clothes for winter. Big-Papa said a name is just a name and then he got very red in the face and hugged me very tightly and he refused to answer me until I called him Big-Papa. 

Big-Papa and Big-Mama don’t live as far away as Grandpa and Grandma. They live in Gwangju. Daddy and Papa have to drive us for hours to see them. Sometimes they come to Seoul to visit. Big-Papa likes to bring me gifts and sit and tell me about the bad people he helped fight and put away. He was very happy when I told him I want to grow up to be like him, and be like Daddy. And also be like my favourite Disney Princess, too. Her name is Mulan.

Mulan is my favourite Disney Princess because she’s not really a princess, and she helps people, and protects them against bullies. She also really loves her Papa, like I do. I have black hair like hers. Although my hair is curly like Papa’s. Mulan’s is straight.

Daddy says his favourite Disney Princess is Cinderella. He says it’s because she’s very good at dancing, but I think Daddy is just joking. There are two Disney Princess movies Daddy cries at. One is Pocahontas. The other is Merida’s Brave. I guess they’re his favourites. 

Daddy also cries at the Lion King, but he swore me to secrecy and made me promise I’ll never tell Papa. I didn’t break my promise. Papa, you’re only reading it now, but I didn’t tell it to you.

Papa doesn’t like the Disney Princesses. He says they’re rubbish and they make him spend too much money. Daddy says that’s because before I went to school, I made Papa watch and watch and watch the Frozen movies so now Papa is scared of them. 

Even though Papa says they’re rubbish, Papa still knows all the words to the Frozen songs. When I sing, he sings along with me, too. He doesn’t say it, but I know his favourite song is _Show Yourself_ . Daddy’s is _The Next Right Thing_ , but I also catch him singing _Lost In The Woods_ sometimes when I have my Frozen marathons.

I still really like Anna and Elsa, even though I don’t dress up as them anymore. Only little girls wear princess dresses, and I’m a big girl now. 

My water bottle has a picture of Arendelle, because I think Arendelle is very pretty. They have a lot of trees, like we do on our terrace. Papa is a little like Elsa, sometimes with people we don’t know. When I was younger, I would wear my Anna dress nearly every time I went out with Papa, because Elsa should have her Anna with her.

Papa’s less like Elsa now, with other people. With me, Papa is always Olaf. He likes to follow me around like Olaf does Elsa and Anna, too. Whenever I ask Papa questions, he will be very patient, and tell me the answers. But sometimes he says I ask too many questions and “it will all make sense when I’m older”, which is what Olaf says, too.

Once, I told Daddy this. Daddy laughed very very very hard and he went red in the face while laughing and had to lie down on the floor for a little while to laugh more. He gave me extra money to put in the swear jar, and asked me to go tell Papa that I say he is Olaf.

I went into Papa’s study then, and told Papa, “you are Olaf”. But Papa didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went back to looking at his work and tapping very hard on the computer keys. Daddy came in after that, to his side of the study. But he kept laughing and laughing, until Papa told him to shut up and threw a cushion at his head.

Things like this happen, so we have a swear jar at home. Papa is usually the one paying to the jar. Sometimes when Daddy brings his worksheets home, his homework makes him sad and he says bad words under his breath, too, when he thinks I’m not listening.

That doesn’t happen often, which is good. I don’t like it when Daddy is sad. Usually Papa is the one saying bad words at Daddy, and smiling, so he doesn’t really mean it.

Daddy told me afterwards that this wasn’t Papa being violent, because violence is a bad thing. Papa was just showing his love, and Daddy showed his love right back, by throwing the cushion back at Papa and continuing to laugh when the cushion smacked Papa in the face.

“Don’t abuse me in front of Rice Cake,” Papa would say then.

Papa calls me Rice Cake sometimes. I like it. It’s his little name for me, for years and years and years. I don’t remember when it started. But Grandfather says it was since I was a baby, so it must be. 

Daddy’s little name for me is Cherry Bomb. He uses it more when either one of us is in trouble with Papa. 

Cherry is my big name. My official name. Papa says I used that to introduce myself to Daddy, back when Daddy wasn’t my daddy yet.

Daddy’s official name is Yunho, but back then, I called him Uncle Youknow, because I couldn’t pronounce his name, and I wanted to be friends with him in a supermarket. 

We talk about this lots of times, at home and with my family, so I know what Papa wants me to say whenever he talks about it.

“Didn’t you want to be friends with Daddy too? Even when he was Uncle Youknow?” I will say.

“No,” Papa will retort, and pretends to be cross. I know he’s not really cross, though. “Papa thought Daddy was a strange man who tried to abduct Rice Cake. Papa just wanted him to go away.”

“Really,” Daddy will murmur. “Really, Changminnie? And the cafe? And by the river, too?”

Changminnie is Daddy’s little name for Papa. 

Usually when Papa talks about this, Daddy just laughs a lot a lot a lot, and says, “Changminnie!”.

I like it when Daddy laughs. My Daddy is pretty when he laughs. Papa is pretty, too. I look like Papa. But my Daddy is the prettiest.

Papa thinks so too. Sometimes Daddy laughs and laughs and Papa goes quiet and just looks and looks and when Big Aunt and Small Aunt are around, they take lots of pictures and tell me I will thank them for it when I grow up more.

And that’s all of my family. There is Papa and Daddy and Mother and Mother’s people and Big Aunt and New Uncle and Little Aunt and Grandmother and Grandfather and Grandpa and Grandma and Big-Papa and Big-Mama. There are a lot of us and I love all of them.

Most of all, I love Papa and Daddy and they love me.

  
  


` [Editor’s note: `

`How am I supposed to edit this, Rice Cake? Your teacher wanted you to write about your family, not have you ramble on about Disney Princesses and that one time when your dad was a strange man you picked up in the supermarket. Your form teacher will read this and have us both carted off under allegations of domestic violence! You need to rewrite this. Ask your Daddy for help. Tell him that Papa took the first round so it's only fair Daddy takes over the second time.] `

  
  
  


_**\---- End. Really.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--and F is for Family, which exists in many forms and is defined by love in all its iterations. Thank you for reading about Rice Cake, and the people that love her!


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